• Grapho@lemmy.mlOP
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      6 hours ago

      This image is almost 3 years old already lmao.

      If any libs want to learn how tankies see the future you might want to read about the past for once. Pop history doesn’t count.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        3 hours ago

        That’s the kicker, Leftists are correct far more often than liberals yet libs never put 2 and 2 together.

        • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          Only if you ignore all the obvious facts that make them wrong. For example two of the “allies” pictured here were never allies.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            3 hours ago

            Seems to me it’s more saying that NATO’s stated goal for Libya was to “liberate” it, when in reality it was a disaster.

            Either way, I’m more interested in continuing the conversations I tried to have with you regarding Marx’s Law of Value and your understanding of how the PRC functions.

            • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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              2 hours ago

              Ok but Qaddafi wasn’t an ally of the USA.

              Im not engaging in discussions that have zero to do with this thread in this thread.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                2 hours ago

                You don’t have to respond in this thread, I just want you to give an example on the other thread that you say disproves Marx’s Law of Value, and ideally also elaborate on why you think workers in the PRC had it better 2-3 decades ago compared to today.

    • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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      3 hours ago

      How was Libya, a member of the non-aligned movement, a US ally? They literally were part of a group that took neither side in the Cold War.

      OBL was never an ally. The US gave money to the Pakistani ISI who gave money to fixers who gave money to OBL. There was no direct channel. He was never an ally and it is a weird assertion to make given the history.

      The other two were US allies. Noriega was even friendly with Bush 41. This is just bad history.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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      55 minutes ago

      Russia is a huge country has plenty of minerals and a low population. Trading people for more minerals isn’t exactly in Russia’s interest.

      • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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        16 minutes ago

        These minerals threaten the Russian economy and their soft power over other European nations. If Germany can get their fuel supply from Ukraine rather than Russia that weakens Russia

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      One of the reasons, others include vengenance over Ukrainians throwing out his puppet from the government, insane conspiracy theories about Lenin creating the Ukrainian nation, etc.

    • Gladaed@feddit.org
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      2 hours ago

      Unlikely. There are and where good economic and political reasons for the war.

      The blossoming democracy, freedom and wealth in Ukraine are dangerous to the stability of Russia. They show what could have been.

      The annexation of crimes did bring ports to further Russia’s imperial ambition. The agricultural land is of high quality and will secure Russia’s role as a resource exporter after the phase out of fossils. You also need to keep in mind that siberia’s agricultural output is severely at risk from climate change. Ukraine had impressive heavy industry. They took transit tolls for Russian gas which could be saved.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      No, Russia stated that NATO membership for Ukraine was a red line, so their goal is to either prevent membership or demillitarize Ukraine entirely, and they have the means and will to continue until those objectives are met. That’s really all it boils down to.

      • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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        2 hours ago

        This all starts when it becomes clear Ukraine has mineral rights that threaten Russia’s ability to lean on Western Europe to the extent it does/did.

        The NATO claims are just cover. Even if they were true Russia has zero right to determine Ukraine’s future.

        It’s weird to see “leftists” endorse imperialism while attempting to claim any kind of morality.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          2 hours ago

          No, it started a lot longer ago than that. Russia has maintained for decades now that NATO encirclement is a red line, and that included Ukraine. I’m not “endorsing” anything here, but explaining the cause of the war. Russia is interested in having a buffer zone against NATO, the US is interested in profiteering in the form of loans and mineral rights, and the ruling class of Ukraine is interested in gettting rich off of sending young people to die in a preventable war.

          This isn’t a war of “righteousness” or anything, it isn’t good vs evil, but 3 countries with different interests and the Ukrainian people ending up with by far the shortest end of the stick.

          • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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            2 hours ago

            To be clear Im talking about many of the other leftists that are celebrating Putin’s invasions/actions not just you specifically

            Russia has no right to demand a buffer zone and they have had plans to retake Ukraine for years as you always had that cadre of nutjobs going back to Zhirinovsky that would comment on the need to rebuild the empire. I believe they just found the right circumstances to take advantage of the situation.

            No war is about morality and the only side with anything resembling a moral claim at all are those invaded.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              2 hours ago

              I don’t see what discussing the morality of the invasion will practically solve, nor the insistence on Russia not actually caring about NATO and instead wanting minerals. The reason it’s important to accurately identify the cause of war is so that we can find a way to end it with the least harm possible, as it stands right now Ukraine is getting the rug pulled from under them and will be subject to US loans and Russian victory, the worst outcome for them, period.

              • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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                10 minutes ago

                Im not saying Russia doesn’t care about NATO. I have stated that it does not matter what Russia’s position is as they have no right to determine what Ukraine does despite the intense entitlement throughout Russia

  • rocket_dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    14 hours ago

    Funny wojak faces but to clear up an apparent misconception here, Ukrainian weren’t fighting for abstract concepts like “freedom” and Democracy", they were fighting to stop Russian soldiers from killing their families, raping their children, and burning their homes to the ground.

    I hope this helps!

    • johny@feddit.org
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      5 hours ago

      Ukrainians were/are still fighting to defend themselves from an illegal invasion. But America sees and has always seen Ukraine as a proxy to weaken a geo-strategic rival. NATO was not realistically on the table as long as the conflict in the Donbas was ongoing (it would have immediately triggered art.5) to keep promising NATO instead of working on a more realistic path to peace has probably caused the death of 100000s of Ukrainians. And just as with many other imperial proxies in history, the proxy is left to deal with the fallout while the empire retreats to the metropol and prepares for the next conflict.

      • rocket_dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        19 minutes ago

        Really spot on except America isn’t exactly retreating, it’s just now under the leadership of an administration that would prefer to have Russia as an ally.

        Instead of two imperialist powers fighting via proxy, they could just work together and strip smaller counties of their natural resources, side by side. Imperialism united.

    • Grapho@lemmy.mlOP
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      14 hours ago

      I think you’ll find they were fighting other Ukrainians (if you can call the carpet bombing of civilians “fighting”) to maintain the US financed Poroshenko in power long before Russia went in, about eight years in fact.

        • Grapho@lemmy.mlOP
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          8 hours ago

          It actually started on February 2014 and then abruptly stopped around May for 8 years

      • Skua@kbin.earth
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        13 hours ago

        long before Russia went in

        There’s a problem with this, because Russia has had troops in Ukraine since early 2014, before Poroshenko’s government

        • Grapho@lemmy.mlOP
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          13 hours ago

          The Sbovoda interim was also financed by the USA, with Victoria Nuland discussing on a leaked call who to name after they deposed Yanukovich.

          Russia had troops in Crimea as requested by the Crimean government, which also seceded via referendum after said coup, as is its right under Ukrainian law. That proved to be the right move given that they didn’t have the astronomical number of casualties that Donbas had, with over 14 thousand dead before 2022, most of them civilians, and a huge number of injured civilians and destroyed infrastructure as per the Donbas documentary.

          • Skua@kbin.earth
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            13 hours ago

            If America’s goal was to put Svoboda in power, they didn’t do a very good job of keeping them there, did they?

            I have read the Nuland transcript. She’s talking about the existing leader of the opposition. Of course she said Yatsenyuk was the guy, he was the goddamn leader of the opposition. He was the one guy avalable with the best democratic mandate at the last election. Yanukovych even offered to make him prime minister at one point.

            Russia put troops into Crimea before the referendum, and the referendum was run by the occupying army. Do you normally trust occupying armies to run referendums about whether or not they should get to keep the land they’re occupying?

            Perhaps if Russia was so concerned about casualties in the Donbas, it should not have invaded and caused hundreds of thousands more casualties.

            • Grapho@lemmy.mlOP
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              8 hours ago

              Lmao so the US did finance them, did appoint their best liked interim, did have congresspeople on the ground supporting the coup, did send in the money to arm the Nazis but just… quietly let democracy take its course once they spent all that time and money? America doesn’t give a fuck if Sbovoda remains as long as the shock therapy has happened already, by then they’ll take anyone who’ll toe the line.

              I want to give y’all the benefit of the doubt and conclude that you think we’re stupid but sometimes I think there’s a more obvious answer.

              • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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                3 hours ago

                You are backing the Russian invasion of Ukraine which they did to steal minerals and you are criticizing the US doing the same now that POTUS is a Russian asset?

              • Skua@kbin.earth
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                13 hours ago

                Ukrainians already wanted to align with the EU. The US didn’t need to do a damn thing to influence that, a long history of Russian imperialism did it all for them

                America spent fuck all on Ukraine in the entire history of its independence up until Euromaidan (pg 167). They simply did not spend “all that money”, because a single digit millions of dollars a year is a rounding error in the US budget. American spending on Ukraine in 2013 was 0.00024% of the federal budget.

                • Grapho@lemmy.mlOP
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                  America spent fuck all on Ukraine in the entire history of its independence up until Euromaidan

                  Oh fr? Let’s ask as-US-backed-as-US-backed-gets Kyiv Independent then: https://kyivindependent.com/how-us-foreign-aid-transformed-ukraine-through-the-years/

                  With the signing of a bilateral agreement between Ukraine and USAID in 1992, the agency started working alongside the Ukrainian government to build a competitive market economy, implement crucial social reforms […] In over 30 years of working in Ukraine, USAID has played a key role in transforming numerous sectors […] Dmytro Boyarchuk, the executive director of the Centre for Social and Economic Research (CASE Ukraine), said that Ukraine would not have been able to implement vital reforms without the support of international donors like USAID.

                  Obfuscate it as much as you want, pro-western Ukrainians themselves are telling everyone how maintaining a pro-western system depends on US funds.

                  The US didn’t need to do a damn thing

                  Nice deflection but the fact is that it did, often and extensively. If the US didn’t need to spend that money, then you shouldn’t worry, pretty soon they might not be. Let’s see how friendly that world is to the US and their chickenshit vassals in the UK et al, I yearn to see it. Most of all I yearn that y’all see it.

                • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                  12 hours ago

                  If Ukrainians already wanted to align with the EU, then why did they democratically elect Yanukovych, which the US subsequently couped in coordination with the Banderites?

                • Grapho@lemmy.mlOP
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                  7 hours ago

                  American spending on Ukraine in 2013

                  Good thing we’re talking about the money it spent on the coup and the aftermath, then.

                  So the fact that America funded through USAID 9 out of every 10 media outlets means they didn’t spend “anything” in Ukraine because… It spends way more fucking money than that everywhere else too?

                  Also, implying the US only spends the money in a country via direct government cash injection lmao. Most of the money the US spends is channelled through NGOs for propaganda and covert action. Why the fuck would they ever just give money away to a government before it’s thoroughly vassalized. What’s more: there’s ample evidence that US and UK propaganda specialists were employed by Subversive elements within Ukraine as well as extensive funding of NGOs and collaboration with psyop specialists.

                  In future resumes, they cited the Ukraine coup as well as the selling of the civil war as a “war against russian separatists” as an example of a successful psychological operation.

      • rocket_dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        13 hours ago

        And Putin, out of the kindness of his heart, sent soldiers in to kill more civilians and rape children, so he could seize territory and strip Ukraine of it’s natural resources.

  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    If it was simple mob extortion it would be reasonable. Zelensky originally agreed when he thought the deal would be to pay for American protection.

    But Trump wants the money AND wants Ukraine to surrender. Trump is a stupid mob boss who doesn’t understand why “Pay me and I’ll let the rival gang burn your business.” isn’t going to be accepted.

    • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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      3 hours ago

      Trump works for the rival gang though. He’s just demanding the minerals so the dipshits will blame the USA instead of Russia. Putin gets what he wants to steal and he looks good in the eyes of the pro-authoritarian class traitors in this thread.

    • HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works
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      8 hours ago

      To me, we are back to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, except this time it’s Ukraine instead of Poland and the US replace Nazi Germany…

      • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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        3 hours ago

        I am once again begging liberals to learn any history other than WW2. (And ideally actually learn about WW2 as well)

      • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
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        5 hours ago

        In my humble opinion, this is nothing like the Molotov-Ribbentrop. Molotov-Ribbentrop gets a lot of bad advertising due to cold war propaganda, but even western leaders in the west at the time like Churchill admitted that the Soviets had no other option (if you want evidence I have plenty of reference, feel free to ask :)

        The Soviets spent the entire 30s warning of fascism and trying to build mutual defense agreements with France, England and Poland and they refused systematically, even when in 1939 the Soviets offered to send 1 million troops together with artillery, tanks and planes, to the Polish and French borders on exchange for a mutual defense agreement, but the French and English ambassadors received orders not to engage in actual negotiations and just to postpone the agreement, since they wanted the Nazis to invade the Soviet Union.

        Either way even if you fundamentally disagree with what I’m saying, what was the alternative? Poland was going to get steamrolled by the Nazis with or without the soviets controlling the eastern part of it (as proven by the fact that soviets started invading some weeks after the Nazis). What’s more desirable, half of Poland having concentration camps, or the entirety of Poland having concentration camps?

        All of this could have been prevented in my opinion if western countries agreed to engage the Nazis together with the Soviet union, as the soviets suggested as an alternative to the Munich agreements. So the lesson in my view is: to fight fascism, listen to socialists (who are the ones who actually defeated most Nazis in the eastern front)

        • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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          44 minutes ago

          Not to defend the flawed comparison with Trump’s treason, but that’s a very useless take on the M-R pact…

          Stalin could have

          • not promised the nazis to attack the Poles from the rear
          • not attacked the Poles from the rear
          • not murdered hundreds of thousands of Poles after high-fiving the nazis after having succesfully attacked the Poles from the rear

          I think all of these alternatives would have been more desirable than, well, actively teaming up with the nazis

          edit: list layout

          • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
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            2 hours ago

            Stalin could have not promised the nazis to attack the Poles from the rear not attacked the Poles from the rear

            Again, please tell me what was the alternative to Soviet occupation in Eastern Poland, once Poland rejected a mutual defense agreement against Nazis with the Soviets.

            murdered hundreds of thousands of Poles

            I don’t think those numbers are honest, can you provide a source for that? I know about the Katyn massacre and about other events in which Nazi collaborators/Bourgeois Polish nationalists were killed (as well as some innocent civilians), but AFAIK the numbers don’t go that high

            I think all of these alternatives would have been more desirable

            Again, how is tens of thousands of deaths in occupied Poland (many of which were Nazi collaborators and bourgeois Polish nationalists) preferable to Nazi occupation? Or can you think of an alternative to either of these two options?

            • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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              45 minutes ago

              please tell me what was the alternative to Soviet occupation in Eastern Poland, once Poland rejected a mutual defense agreement against Nazis with the Soviets

              There were several alternatives, actually. But most of them would start with Russia not attacking them in the rear after they moved their troops west to fight off the nazis

              can you provide a source for that? I know about the Katyn massacre and about other events in which Nazi collaborators/Bourgeois Polish nationalists were killed (as well as some innocent civilians), but AFAIK the numbers don’t go that high

              Yeah sure, here’s one that estimates between 250k and 1.5m (but which I believe also includes post-war)

              But I presume that if you’re the type that already convinced themselves that all these murdered Poles “must have deserved it” in one way or another, then that number probably couldn’t be high enough anyway