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5 hours agoNo, it is quite the opposite.
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Cake day: August 7th, 2025
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I listen, but I don’t believe them all. You have to apply some critical thinking.
We definitely should elect better leaders, that’s for sure. These have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing. It takes too much effort, and it’s going way too slowly, but they can be moved. They’ve moved somewhat (not enough) on Ukraine, Gaza and even the environment, all due to popular pressure, but they need to move a lot further. People need to stop voting for the right wing idiots they keep electing.
Who is “we”? Diva mentioned the CFA franc, and I responded to that. That’s what we’re talking about.
But your criticism of the IMF and World Bank is justified.
No, this is wrong, this is a story that is pushed by western pundits, but it’s based on nothing.
It’s also based on the words of Putin himself. He has frequently declared that he doesn’t respect Ukraine’s independence, that it’s not a real country, that it should be part of Russia.
He’s really not making a secret of his imperial ambitions. I don’t know why you’re trying to sell a different narrative.
In fact, you’ll often see a sort of double-reality in the words of western commentators, where they both make fun of Putin for declaring and stressing his red lines (and then not following through with the threats)
I haven’t seen anyone making fun of Putin for not starting a nuclear war. Because that’s what he’s threatening. He uses nuclear blackmail to force other countries to let him take Ukraine, which ny itself is an incredibly dangerous precedent, and if it gets rewarded, he might use it again.
The much more realistic assumption, rather than Putin role-playing Bonaparte, is that Russia feels NATO in Donbass is an existential threat and wants a buffer region.
He wants entire buffer countries. He wasn’t content with just Donbass. It’s ridiculous that he wants a buffer, because he already has the largest country in the world. He poses a much larger existential threat to Ukraine and other neighbouring countries than they do Russia. It’s an absolute nonsense argument that tries to justify Russian exceptionalism and imperialism.
By choice, mind you. The CFA franc was introduced during colonial times, but after their independence, countries have the option to keep it or get their own currency. Some introduced their own currency. Others, that had never been French colonies, adopted the CFA franc.
It is absolutely a remnant of colonialism, but countries are free to adopt it or not.
There’s currently a wave of articles in the NRC going on about feminism, for the millionth time, about violence against women, because one teenage girl had been killed. Meanwhile, in Palestine we have hundreds of thousands of women and children dying of a genocide and it’s being completedly ignored.
If you know about the articles in NRC, you also know that they have many articles about Gaza, and yet you choose to lie about that. Why would you even think you can lie about that when I also have access to those articles?
Do you think the state media of a nation committing atrocities is going to tell you the truth about those atrocities? Do you believe Israeli denial of genocide in Gaza?
If you do, you’re a naive tool of imperialists.
This guy makes one mistake in his reasoning. He’s absolutely right about Trump not offering a real peace deal, but he talks about the conflict as if it’s something the US forced on Russia, which is of course not true; it’s Russia, and specifically Putin, who chose to start this war and invade Ukraine. He talks about NATO expansion as if that’s something the US is pushing, but again, countries want to join NATO because they feel threatened by Russia.
Russia started this war because NATO rejected Ukraine’s membership, leaving Ukraine vulnerable. But it wasn’t a definitive rejection, leaving Putin to think he had a closing window of opportunity to invade Ukraine, which is why he rushed into this foolish war. Harder guarantees for Ukrainian security would have dissuaded Putin.
EU, meanwhile, never wanted anything like this, and even remained in denial after the invasion started. The EU just wants to trade with Russia and treat it as a normal country, a trading partner. Even after Putin invaded, they kept buying Russian gas for quite some time and some countries really didn’t want to stop. Because gas is more important than human lives, to some.
Freezing the conflict is a bad idea; there needs to be a permanent peace, but there can only be a permanent peace if Russia stops invading its neighbours (this wasn’t the first time), and Putin made it clear he has no plans to stop. He’s frequently talking about Lithuania, Moldova, and more recently Azerbaijan.
It’s pretty clear what the problem is here. It’s Russian imperialism. Putin’s dreams of empire. His unwillingness to accept other nations as equals.
About what? The other European colonial powers have lost most of their colonies. Spain and Portugal don’t control South America anymore. The UK doesn’t control India, Africa, Canada, Australia or the US. Netherlands doesn’t control Indonesia or Suriname. France doesn’t control western Africa (although it does still try to interfere sometimes). But Russia still controls Siberia. And they also want Ukraine back.
That’s a real colonial power. Modern neocolonialism notwithstanding, Russia still has the original thing.
Mixed economy is the word for it.
They exist, though. They’re worth listening to. Critically, of course, as with all media.
social democrats are capitalists,
Yet they are also socialists. By definition. They’re trying to find a balance, and have at times been quite successful.
Seriously, read up on the history of socialism. There’s a lot more to it than you probably think.
That’s certainly what they want you to accept. What Putin wants you to believe. But this is clearly a case where US and European interests diverge. Trump wants to play nice with Putin while waging his economic war on Europe and the rest of the world, while Europe is trying to stop or slow Russian aggression. And degrading itself trying to keep Trump onboard.
It’s a mess, but defending against aggression is still better than surrendering to it. Europe needs to learn to stand on its own feet.
Learn what? Most people here just repeat shallow dogma. Brainless zingers like that, no actual info. Nothing new at least. Bully people into accepting the propaganda. That’s not how people learn.
I have learned quite a bit here, though.
I guess that answers that.
Do really don’t have anything useful to say, do you? Just piss on whatever doesn’t fit your story.
How did you determine what “really happened”?
Finally a productive question. You listen to all the sides. You listen to independent media on the ground. You don’t just cling to whatever story happens to fit your worldview, but you consider the different stories and watch what adds up and what doesn’t. Who leaves out what details to better fit their narrative and who tells the whole thing.
And sure, that means you’ve got to do some work. Put in some actual critical thought. And yes, lots of people don’t like that just stick to whatever narrative they prefer, or even whatever is fed to them. But looking critically at media is a vital survival skill these days.
Blindly accepting known partisan media on the very topic you know they can’t be objective about, is not that.
I always start out believing people are capable of critical thought and self awareness, until they prove otherwise. Plenty of that in this discussion, unfortunately.
Should I just accept that you’re incapable of critical thought or grasping meaningful nuance?
The difference between you and I is that I’m not fooled by the corporate proxy that is western media.
And that’s only something you’re reading into this. I’m well aware of the problems with western media. Some of them are notorious for their lies, many are corporate controlled, and especially in the US, refuse to even acknowledge anti corporate sentiment (see how US media struggled to make sense of Luigi Mangione, for example), but they’re fairly transparent about it, and and sometimes they really are telling the truth.
With some critical thinking, you can actually discern the truth out of that, without having to resort to Russian state media’s reports on the disastrous war Russia is waging.
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