Except these are states that explicitly signed on to this constitution, not some innocent sovereign country. It’s not problematic at all to collectively enforce what they’re constantly trying to weasel out of.

It hasn’t even been oppression or exploitation, the quality of life for those populations has always objectively improved. You won’t catch me shedding a tear for slave plantation owners getting their property broken up and redistributed. Good riddance to the Jim Crowe business owners. Let’s absolutely have armed poll watchers ensuring the voting rights of minorities.

Don’t fall for the conservative crocodile tears that pour out when we infringe on their right to keep citizens uneducated, sick and poor.

Cool cool, now just need to wire it up to every common command and make a custom best-effort fallback so I never have to think about it (except for when it inexplicably breaks in 6 months and I need to fix it again).

Gonna get down voted to hell for this, but it’s my main gripe with daily driving Linux: to get a semblance of QoL you either monkey patch a brittle solution or dedicate your finite time and memory to learning the song and dance of each tool.

I know it’s not fair to gripe about freely supported open source software, but dev tooling has advanced an incredible amount since the old hackathon days. We need better efforts around modular integration and UX to really get widespread adoption.

Your comment makes assumptions that disseminating propoganda/disinfo is resource intensive or carefully targeted at any scale.

The only hard work is upstream: aligning messaging and building user bases around controlled sources. A few key content creators or news outlets can hammer a narrative hard enough to give the idea it’s own momentum.

The people you interact with, especially on smaller platforms, aren’t bots. Bots and malicious actors exist to amplify messages in the main stream (up votes, shares, reposts, etc…) and they generally don’t have to interact much beyond putting up the facade of a normal user. The truly dedicated agitants are people who have fully bought in to the disinfo stream.

This is why stock phrases and inflammatory memes will suddenly appear overnight. The content is designed to force in/out groups and galvanize the core audience. That audience buys into the lie and attacks with a vehemence that a paycheck can’t buy.

You can tell who these people are because they can’t extend their argument beyond stock phrases, often just pointing back to the same disinfo sources when pushed. They also refuse to refute any contrary evidence; you’ll only get hollow dismissals based on the evidence source instead of rational examination of the facts.

My dyscalculic ass trying to remember what 50% of 6 is

Trump is not in Putin’s pocket. You need to pay attention to what politicians actually do

He has demonstrably deconstructed the aid and intelligence network surrounding Ukraine. He quite literally halted aid in the lead up to a Russian offensive. He’s eased sanctions. You can easily find these real and tangible examples and contrast them with previous administrations and his own past actions. He doesn’t give two shits about supporting Ukraine with the exception of keeping a nominal threat around to line his pockets.

It’s not “BlueAnon” (whatever you imagine that is) to open your eyes and call a spade a spade. Nobody has been a more consistent political winner in the last 20 years than Russia. Putin has talked and written about his geopolitical strategy, it’s not a secret. Russia’s online propaganda proliferation is honed to a fine point; and you don’t even have to trust a filthy western government on that, just review the publicly available research yourself.

If you know anyone who lives/has lived in Eastern Europe they won’t hesitate to tell you their experience with Russia as a neighbor. Your picture of a poor, resource limited country is 100% accurate and completely in line with their expansionist ambitions. It’s why they’ve always maintained an outsized strategic focus on military strength and indirect subversion.

What do you mean by “copy and paste” arguments? My arguments are very consistent with other communist orgs… [pasted links and unexamined block quotes]

If you want to meaningfully engage with political reality outside of your echo chamber, you have to start by not dismissing everything you disagree with whole-cloth and realize that you are basically never exposed to online content with honest motives.

Look deeper and holistically at the platforms and people you engage with. For all of .ml’s criticism of wikipedia I never see any mention of the fact that all authors and edits can be explored, or that different language sources can be influenced in opposing directions (for example, compare Chinese to English on any article). For all of its flaws, it’s widely accessible to all actors and sees a ton of activity.

Conversely, why put so much faith in ProleWiki? The number of editors is tiny and their identities are entirely obscure. There are vanishingly few competing viewpoints to contrast and the density of citations is extremely sparse in comparison. Its closer in scale and content to a personal blog than an honest knowledge base.

I’d challenge you to read this leftist piece on Russia’s strategy from way back in 2015 (well before the term “Russian interference” had hit the mainstream) and contrast it with your usual sources.

Brother I took literally no stance on any domestic Ukrainian politics. “Critical support” is a horse shit excuse for not having the moral fiber to push back on your propoganda regimen. Somehow every whiff of a staged coup is an affront to human decency but foreign tanks rolling in and blowing up hospitals is complex and multilayered?

Crazy that we have every fascist regime lining up with Putin in a united opposition to… more fascists? With your favorite leftist talking heads in tow? It doesn’t make sense at a fundamental level and it’s trivial to trace the rhetoric back to who it most benefits. But sure, make a strawman and call me whatever you want if it helps ease the cognitive dissonance.

Nothing you’ve touched on has any relevancy to your purported support of the people in the Donbass region. Unless your theory is that Russia is a bastion of socialist empowerment and not 5 capitalists in a trench coat, every single one of your talking points is carrying water for Russian imperial ambition. Swapping out one master for another isn’t breaking your shackles. I hope Moscow is at least cutting you a check for your hard work.

The west is not “licking Putin’s boots.”

The guy in charge of the nukes has been in closer contact with Moscow than any western official in the last 50+ years. He’s constantly spewing support on stage, in the media and in private meetings. He’s been holding this stance well before his first term in office. How can NATO be any kind of threat when he’s in your pocket?

His own sycophants are constantly spouting the same NATO talking points as you. Truly you’re a student of 20th century Stalinism when your foreign policy somehow aligns perfectly with every contemporary fascist and proto-fascist government.

It seems that Russia is going to achieve all of its stated goals

When did I deny that? I’m pointing out that taking this aggressive route is a backward approach if maintaining a strong defensive stance is your primary goal. It’s almost like they wanted to gamble for more unstated goals than just that. Taking territory is only necessary if you insist on a future escalation or want to exploit its people/resources.

I know you’re going to try to explain how this obvious Bad Thing (exploitation and escalation) is really a Good Thing via some Rube Goldberg-esque logical knots. Save your keyboard, I’m just not gonna buy that some special flavors of international meddling via national ambitions are good when your whole argument is formulated against it.

And don’t bother with your cherry picked reading list. It’s all formal dialectics until a different source makes some cogent points at the flaws in your dogma. Then it’s endless genetic fallacies and character attacks on sources with no original thought or debate. We can have a real discussion when you come up with a talking point that isn’t copy-paste.

establish a buffer zone so the west can’t as easily invade by land

Lolwut. The same west who’s sole military arm is currently licking Putin’s boots? Seems to me Russia had a much simpler and easier strategy if that’s all they wanted: bide their time and not get involved with any foreign military actions.

America seems to be collapsing (with or without their interference) and Europe wouldn’t have any public support for militarization without Putin rolling tanks around and brandishing nukes. NATO could have easily dissolved without doing anything in a decade or two, it was already starting to be viewed as a Cold War relic in the west.

You’re saying it’s logical to risk all of that just to help some poor, needy rebels? They need to defend themselves by painting themselves as the largest active aggressor? That’s just straight up bad geopolitical strategy. The 'Merica-Bad goggles have really messed with your vision.

That’s a great question! I’ll be happy to help you count the lights. I see five lights.

Here are a few ways you can improve indoor lighting:

What about winter? Checkmate libz

Out of curiosity, what is your experience/usage like with this? Spotify is very easy to justify if you heavily use some of their features because there’s not a way (that I know of) to replicate them. For example:

• Shared playlists
• Universal links directly to songs
• Playback control from a second device
• Group listen/jam
• Zero overhead for search and discovery. From someone mentioning a band you can find, sample, and add to a playlist in 30s or less
• Public playlist discovery
• Easy crawling. Eg. browsing from Song -> Featured Artist -> Album -> Record label -> Related Artists etc…

From my usage, sacrificing a majority of those is a non-starter because my Spotify usage has become more than mp3 hosting and organization.

Not an ad-hominem when it’s directly pertinent to the debate and an example of your implicit bias. If you take not understanding a word or filtering it through your own bias that be stupidity then that’s on you.

What should the Soviets have done instead?

Again, the conversation won’t go anywhere because no matter what I say, you’ll say it couldn’t be done.

That there was literally no possibility of making concessions to the Allies or leveraging their resources in a more indirect way. No way to manage your political footing that didn’t require reliance on Nazis or giving them an open flank in Eastern Europe. No German aggression that could be deflected and spun to international support. They definitely needed to make a photo-op of signing documents next to Nazis and of Soviet troops shaking hands with Germans. They needed to immediately start the annexation and sovietization of territories fresh off their liberation from inevitable German capture. No other way, definitely needed to happen like that.

Talking to you is a clinic in historical determinism.

1940 is the date Goebbels reported

All of these were verified by the Red Cross and there are stacks of documents giving evidence and testimony to the contrary. But yes, I suppose if you throw out everything you don’t like then any argument will get flimsy. Certainly we don’t get “genuine analysis” as you put it.

Further, again, the Soviet weaponry did not fire German ammunition.

The NKVD was a police force, they were under no compulsion to use military issue weapons. There are other documented instances of them using foreign weapons, it’s not out of the ordinary.

This whole weapon discussion is circumstantial evidence at best, there are plenty of ways it could have happened. And of course Goebbels was eager to report it, it’s very well documented in his own records that he was excited about the find and the bad PR it would give the Soviets. The fact that you’re dismissing the general consensus that the international community has come to after decades of investigation just to maintain your own narrative is pretty disappointing.

America rightly draws criticism for their strong arm enforcement of “democratic values” through occupation, but you see no parallel to the USSR enforcing “Soviet values” through the same occupation strategy. You’ve got some massive blinders on.

Profit in English has a usage with the definition I gave. You said yourself they were doing it to their own advantage. They benefited from it, there was some profit to them in the arrangement (unless they like helping Nazi’s out of the kindness of their heart). It’s not throwing anyone under the bus to say I can’t have a conversation if you lack a grasp on the meaning of words in their context.

Would have been great if they traded with them, but it would have also been beneficial to not sign the non-aggression pact and trade agreements, painting yourself as not aligning with their interests while also preaching a revolutionary gospel. You’re stacking the deck against yourself. But again, we’re talking in circles and you refuse to concede literally any ounce of fault or poor political maneuvering, not much to be said.

German-USSR trade was still ongoing in 1941. As part of that trade they did gain access to samples of German artillery, tanks and more. German companies were also known to export arms (in violation of the Versailles treaty) well before WWII. And even if you deny that, there were dozens of countries manufacturing arms and ammo in the German caliber because, get this, German guns were well designed!

Dismissing all evidence that could put Soviets in a bad light, even when it’s internal. Truly you are a Communist at heart.

So let’s put all that aside: capturing thousands of POWs and having them end up massacred in a ditch is acceptable? There’s no fault attributable to them for having this happen to people in their control and under their protection?

The Soviets didn’t have a profit-driven economy, what are you talking about?

Profit: to derive benefit, to be of service or advantage, a valuable return. Are you ESL or do you just have a conditioned response from all the propoganda you gobble up?

Brother in Christ if you can’t even admit giving Nazis oil, iron, rare earth minerals and other war necessities is bad then there’s no discussion to be had here. And you keep pointing it back to the West as if I care or that’s even relevant to the USSR’s actions. Dozens of countries can equivocate and justify their ethically grey actions surrounding WWII, why do the Soviets deserve special treatment in your mind?

The world is a massive place, diplomacy has a million facets, there are always options and trade offs. If you can’t find a single flaw in the USSR’s actions then I pity you. You’ve lost sight of your purported support of class struggle and solidary in favor of waving around Cold War flags.

Per our other conversation, the Soviets were trading for German finished goods. Why would you not expect to find German goods here??

And again, the Soviets themselves admitted to it. Why are you even discussing forgeries?

they continued to profit off the Nazis throughout the war

As did the Soviets, what are we even talking about here?? You just respond to each criticism with “they needed to do it and what about the US”, ignoring the multitude of other actions they could have taken if their priorities matched your claims.

Allies would not trade them

Which they did once they had Soviet support. They almost certainly would have received the same support if they joined them in 1939.

It was official USSR foreign policy that the communist revolution should spread to workers of the world in all countries. Regardless of the detriments or merits of that, you can’t ignore it when examining their foreign relations. Of course they got a different treatment…

The goods they got from the Nazis as a trade contributed towards the defeat of the Nazis.

They absolutely did not! One of the main factors that broke down the USSR-German relationship was a refusal to reciprocate military technology and materials.

The Poles asked for their troops back when they were forming a USSR-based army and were told that thousands had mysteriously escaped. Then when asked for an official investigation, the Soviets broke ties with the Polish government in exile and made their own.

The Soviets themselves later admitted it was the NKVD. Are you defending the USSR from its own slander?

Ah the classic .ml responses: the USSR really wanted to do something but was forced to do the opposite because of those nasty capitalist states and also we’ll just reject all sources we don’t agree with. It’s as iconic as the inverse US claims but you never fail to see the irony.

If you don’t want to believe US reports, just look at Germans attacking US ships well before their entry into the war. It’s not some secret conspiracy that the Allies were benefitting more from the US’s position than the Axis by orders of magnitude.

They saw the Nazis as such a great threat that they needed to give them the materials to fuel Panzers and make the ammunition that killed Allied soldiers? What? If they truly wanted the Nazis gone first and foremost they would not have done that. It doesn’t hold up to any logic.