How can We Blame Trump for Putin Invading Ukraine?

[chargedodger]

3 hours ago, BareLover666 said:

Living in Europe, where - unlike on the USA' soil - both of the World Wars (I and II) were fought, millions were killed and during '40-'45 exterminated for being jewish, communist, gay, being in the resistance against fascisme;
A Europe that is - again - on the brink of becoming such battleground again, this time with the added risk of Nuclear warfare; And perhaps in hindsight we'll know if WW-III has already started.

I am happy with silly topics, such as bareback sex (spun or otherwise). And I still don't get why the OP made this about who's in the White House;

 

But... this is not a "silly topic". 

If it were 'silly' that one single attack against New York's World Trade Center was a mere (silly) prank that got slightly out of hand, and the USA's reaction to this was a childlike tantrum. 

* (This is not how I personally think about either, and I apologise if I hurt somebody with this analogy esp. as this website is based in NYC. I'm just trying in my feeble way to somehow get across the seriousness of war and destruction in a way  Goldneye007 can imagine). 🕊️ 

We are all living on a very small planet in a very large universe and are all interconnected even if it's only because of this one reality. 
If this is WW-III, two of the first casualties from outside of Ukraine were someone who fought HIV for a living, including working to getting us PrEP, and his wife: [think before following links] [think before following links] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joep_Lange.

 

Yeah, great plan. (s)

Let's forget about risking loss of civilian lives and the start of a Nuclear war (that will inevitably also reach the America's as well but who cares).
And let's forget about risking the destruction of a City (Kiev) founded over 1.500 years ago That's about three times as old as St. Augustine (Fl.) for instance.

The difference between Putin/Russia and Xi/China on the one hand and the US, Europe and NATO on the other used to be a little fondness for human rights and dignity like the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness but that's sooo last year isn't it. 

My apologies - again - this time for using sarcasm. 🙄

 

 

your sarcasm is well taken.Putin will destroy what he cannot take.My intent was to save as many civilians as possible by removing them from Kiev,and saving the vacant city itself by using it as bait to concentrate russian forces inside of a city they would possess but could not leave.This war will be ended by diplomats not on the battlefield,and world outrage must be stoked so that outrage can be directed against Russia and any future despots and tyrants by assessing damages to ukrain and enforcement of reparations payments.It IS a small world,and getting smaller militarily speaking.Your opinion matters and sarcasm is a useful tool to get people to STOP and THINK and chart a course beyond this madness.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, chargedodger said:

your sarcasm is well taken.Putin will destroy what he cannot take.My intent was to save as many civilians as possible by removing them from Kiev,and saving the vacant city itself by using it as bait to concentrate russian forces inside of a city they would possess but could not leave.This war will be ended by diplomats not on the battlefield,and world outrage must be stoked so that outrage can be directed against Russia and any future despots and tyrants by assessing damages to ukrain and enforcement of reparations payments.It IS a small world,and getting smaller militarily speaking.Your opinion matters and sarcasm is a useful tool to get people to STOP and THINK and chart a course beyond this madness.

Thanks bro.

I don't think there's easy answers. And I just hope that on both sides of the new Iron Curtain the soldiers who would get the order to launch their nucleair weapons have the courage to refuse such an order.
Whether they're Russian, American, French, British or whatever.

The Nuremberg trials after WWII established - I think for the first time in our history - that 'orders are orders' is not a valid defence and it's every soldier's responsibility to not commit war-crimes. Seeing what's happening in Ukraine right now, does not give much hope. Besides a sense of right or wrong, it would take those servicemen and women an enormous courage to go against their superiors, face court-martial and risk their own well-being.

Yesterday I learned from a news program on television, that over half of the people in the world live in countries that did not condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine... That there are rules, even in times of war, and that it doesn't matter how powerful a country is but they should practice restraint, is at the heart of this war or conflict.

 

That's why - and I'm finally bringing my ramblings back on topic, be it with screeching tires - I am rather happy with President Biden and Vice President Harris being in office and not the previous US president.

No offence to anyone who voted for our orange-faced-friend, but I feel that when both Russia AND the the USA were using 'alternative facts' in stead of just Putin at the moment, the present situation would be impossible to resolve. It would seem like all sides took Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' not as the brilliant novel and warning that it is, but as a road-map.

 

Do the Americans here miss Madeleine Albright's talent for diplomacy, character and unwavering faith in the United States of America as a good idea it times like these as much as I do?  

[ErosWired]

8 hours ago, chargedodger said:

so that outrage can be directed against Russia and any future despots and tyrants by assessing damages to ukrain and enforcement of reparations payments.

The weakness of this strategy is that the world outrage you speak of is taking the form of sanctions designed to devastate the Russian economy. By the time the West gets finished tallying up the bill for the reparations, Russia won’t have anything to pay them with except rubles worthless everywhere except in Russia, and in Russia only valuable by the wheelbarrow load.

It will be a lot like getting a court judgment for damages against a bankrupt defendant - yes, you may have won the case, and yes, he may owe you a million dollars… but you’re never going to see your money.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, ErosWired said:

The weakness of this strategy is that the world outrage you speak of is taking the form of sanctions designed to devastate the Russian economy. By the time the West gets finished tallying up the bill for the reparations, Russia won’t have anything to pay them with except rubles worthless everywhere except in Russia, and in Russia only valuable by the wheelbarrow load.

It will be a lot like getting a court judgment for damages against a bankrupt defendant - yes, you may have won the case, and yes, he may owe you a million dollars… but you’re never going to see your money.

Another down-side is that the high damages imposed on Germany after WW-I, were one of the causes that led to the rise of fascism and then WW-II. Hopefully we'll succeed in not repeating mistakes from the past.
Like I said, there's no easy answers and perhaps Putin's actions leave us no options but to choose between the lesser evils.

 

[hntnhole]

14 hours ago, ErosWired said:

by the wheelbarrow load.

This is exactly what happened to the Weimar Republic's currency - it literally took a wheelbarrow-full of currency to buy one loaf of bread.  When that happens in Russia, there will be millions that are hungry, which harbinger is fraught with tremendous danger.  So what's the answer ....... even more death and destruction?  

[ErosWired]

2 hours ago, BareLover666 said:

Hopefully we'll succeed in not repeating mistakes from the past.

Someone said, history doesn’t repeat itself… but it rhymes.

[chargedodger]

16 hours ago, ErosWired said:

The weakness of this strategy is that the world outrage you speak of is taking the form of sanctions designed to devastate the Russian economy. By the time the West gets finished tallying up the bill for the reparations, Russia won’t have anything to pay them with except rubles worthless everywhere except in Russia, and in Russia only valuable by the wheelbarrow load.

It will be a lot like getting a court judgment for damages against a bankrupt defendant - yes, you may have won the case, and yes, he may owe you a million dollars… but you’re never going to see your money.

russia's oil and gas wealth will support the payments required.But the russian people will blame the US as they get news skewed towards putins agenda.As of yesterday the ruble has recovered to pre invasion values.Russia is a major gold producer,a major oil and gas  producer and will emerge from this war intact unlike ukraine or germany which emerged from war virtually destroyed.Russia has over 630 billion dollars worth of foreign currency reserves and very little debt.She IS able to pay reparations.

Edited March 31, 2022 by chargedodger

[JamesL100]

3 hours ago, ErosWired said:

Someone said, history doesn’t repeat itself… but it rhymes.

I think it's attributed to Mark Twain

[ErosWired]

1 hour ago, chargedodger said:

russia's oil and gas wealth will support the payments required.But the russian people will blame the US as they get news skewed towards putins agenda.As of yesterday the ruble has recovered to pre invasion values.Russia is a major gold producer,a major oil and gas  producer and will emerge from this war intact unlike ukraine or germany which emerged from war virtually destroyed.Russia has over 630 billion dollars worth of foreign currency reserves and very little debt.She IS able to pay reparations.

That’s only because Moscow has taken extraordinary (and unsustainable) measures to prop up the currency in the immediate term, like the central bank raising interest rates to 20%, exporters being ordered to exchange 80% of their foreign currency reserved for rubles, only allowing 33 picked stocks to trade on a carefully monitored stock market, forbidding citizens to make bank transfers out of the country, and more. In the meantime, everyday Russians are beginning panic-buying in the stores and physically fighting over sugar as they watch inflation inch upward toward a projected 50% by year’s end.

Here’s an article with more detail:

[think before following links] https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/31/investing/russia-ruble-putin/index.html

Yes, the Russians have wealth in petroleum, but right now they’re having to sell it to China and India at a whopping 30% discount just to get them to take it, and in order to deliver it their tankers are having to deactivate their transponders at sea (yet another violation of international law) because nobody wants to be caught buying from them. Having a commodity is one thing - having a commodity you can’t readily sell is another.

No, Russia will not emerge from this “intact”. Thousands of Russian lives have already been pointlessly squandered, thousands more will be devastated by those losses for years. The country’s free and independent press, such as it was, has been silenced by new laws, and cannot resume in the current authoritarian climate. There are those who know the truth about the “special operation” and those who have swallowed the Russian Big Lie, and we already hear word of the fault lines growing there, just as they have in the US. And the free world will not see Russia as anything but a war criminal state again for a very long time. Its global reputation is in ruins, no matter what happens. No, Russia will not emerge unscathed. Its wounds are already self-inflicted.

[chargedodger]

1 hour ago, ErosWired said:

That’s only because Moscow has taken extraordinary (and unsustainable) measures to prop up the currency in the immediate term, like the central bank raising interest rates to 20%, exporters being ordered to exchange 80% of their foreign currency reserved for rubles, only allowing 33 picked stocks to trade on a carefully monitored stock market, forbidding citizens to make bank transfers out of the country, and more. In the meantime, everyday Russians are beginning panic-buying in the stores and physically fighting over sugar as they watch inflation inch upward toward a projected 50% by year’s end.

Here’s an article with more detail:

[think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/31/investing/russia-ruble-putin/index.html

Yes, the Russians have wealth in petroleum, but right now they’re having to sell it to China and India at a whopping 30% discount just to get them to take it, and in order to deliver it their tankers are having to deactivate their transponders at sea (yet another violation of international law) because nobody wants to be caught buying from them. Having a commodity is one thing - having a commodity you can’t readily sell is another.

No, Russia will not emerge from this “intact”. Thousands of Russian lives have already been pointlessly squandered, thousands more will be devastated by those losses for years. The country’s free and independent press, such as it was, has been silenced by new laws, and cannot resume in the current authoritarian climate. There are those who know the truth about the “special operation” and those who have swallowed the Russian Big Lie, and we already hear word of the fault lines growing there, just as they have in the US. And the free world will not see Russia as anything but a war criminal state again for a very long time. Its global reputation is in ruins, no matter what happens. No, Russia will not emerge unscathed. Its wounds are already self-inflicted.

emphasis on the term "self inflicted".

[Guest]

On 3/31/2022 at 6:12 PM, ErosWired said:

That’s only because Moscow has taken extraordinary (and unsustainable) measures to prop up the currency in the immediate term, like the central bank raising interest rates to 20%, exporters being ordered to exchange 80% of their foreign currency reserved for rubles, only allowing 33 picked stocks to trade on a carefully monitored stock market, forbidding citizens to make bank transfers out of the country, and more. In the meantime, everyday Russians are beginning panic-buying in the stores and physically fighting over sugar as they watch inflation inch upward toward a projected 50% by year’s end.

Here’s an article with more detail:

[think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/31/investing/russia-ruble-putin/index.html

Yes, the Russians have wealth in petroleum, but right now they’re having to sell it to China and India at a whopping 30% discount just to get them to take it, and in order to deliver it their tankers are having to deactivate their transponders at sea (yet another violation of international law) because nobody wants to be caught buying from them. Having a commodity is one thing - having a commodity you can’t readily sell is another.

No, Russia will not emerge from this “intact”. Thousands of Russian lives have already been pointlessly squandered, thousands more will be devastated by those losses for years. The country’s free and independent press, such as it was, has been silenced by new laws, and cannot resume in the current authoritarian climate. There are those who know the truth about the “special operation” and those who have swallowed the Russian Big Lie, and we already hear word of the fault lines growing there, just as they have in the US. And the free world will not see Russia as anything but a war criminal state again for a very long time. Its global reputation is in ruins, no matter what happens. No, Russia will not emerge unscathed. Its wounds are already self-inflicted.

Suffering Germans lead to the rise of the Nazi party after the Versailles peace-accords, ending WW-I.
So I'm not happy to see this.

 

Right now it's worrying that apparently propaganda spreading false information, fear and discord actually seems to work as is evident from the result of the Hungarian AND the Serbian elections this last Sunday.

Both having the party/leader winning that are opposed to sanctions against Russia.

For some of our members living a bit farther away from Europe:
- Hungary is a full member of both the EU and of NATO.
- Serbia is a 'Partnership-for-Peace' partner of NATO and a EU-candidate.

 

Regardless if the USA is either the leader or 'only' the largest member of the free world, 'we' in the rest of it need to be able to trust on its support and our combined ability to deliver on our promises. And I think this goes for Middle and South-America, Asia (including the Arabian sub-continent) and Africa as well.

The Crimean occupancy of Russia was for one thing, a breach of the 1994 'Budapest Memorandum' between the United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the current war is as well.

When talking about the importance of reputation, this is something else to consider.
We're seeing countries in middle-and Eastern Europe turning to Russia and China because if they can't trust that agreements they make with us have an actual effect - like safeguarding their territorial integrity - neither the US or Western-Europe will not remain their preferred partner. (If we ever were).

 

Besides this I think that if 'freedom' means the freedom to starve, this concept doesn't have the same allure in the rest of the world as it has in the US. I mean that if freedom mainly comprises of unbridled capitalism, we can expect a lot more people (and countries) in the world choosing authoritarian leadership over democratic ones.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by Guest
type-o

[ErosWired]

6 hours ago, BareLover666 said:

When talking about the importance of reputation, this is something else to consider.
We're seeing countries in middle-and Eastern Europe turning to Russia and China because if they can't trust that agreements they make with us have an actual effect - like safeguarding their territorial integrity - neither the US or Western-Europe will not remain their preferred partner. (If we ever were).

Reputation is indeed important, and Russia has been building an indelible one as a nation you absolutely cannot trust to respect anyone’s territorial sovereignty, agreements and treaties be damned. China, too, now has a glaring track record with its blatant bad-faith breach of its agreement regarding the governance of Hong Kong, its overbearing behavior toward Tibet, and if you think it won’t swallow Taiwan at the very first opportunity, you’re not paying attention. They’re not building artificial military islands in the South China Sea for shits and giggles. So I don’t follow the logic - if nations lose faith in the West for not being able to ensure the integrity of agreements, why would they then turn to the offenders who callously violated those agreements in the first place?

6 hours ago, BareLover666 said:

I mean that if freedom mainly comprises of unbridled capitalism, we can expect a lot more people (and countries) in the world choosing authoritarian leadership over democratic ones.

In this, I think, you are correct. In the First World, we tend to think, “Why wouldn’t everyone want these freedoms?” What most fail to consider is that the majority of humanity does not enjoy the style of life we do - they lives are harder, they don’t have access to the same technology or health care, they don’t have the wealth, resources or means of production, and the level of education is lower. There are places where entire populations use outdoor toilets and think nothing of it. There are places where cutting down to plant a meager field is the only way to get by. There are places where you go out and shoot the monkeys from the trees because bushmeat is what’s for dinner. There are many, many places where lighting a wood fire in a hearth is still the way you do your cooking and heat your home. There are so many places where day-to-day survival is so consuming that abstactions like politics aren’t even a consideration. In such cases it can seem much simpler when a government tells you what to do rather than you having to tell the government what to do. It’s just unfortunate that authoritarian structures are the breeding grounds of despots, and the result is human suffering.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, ErosWired said:

So I don’t follow the logic - if nations lose faith in the West for not being able to ensure the integrity of agreements, why would they then turn to the offenders who callously violated those agreements in the first place?

I don't think it's wise to overestimate our reputation abroad.

Being in the sphere of influence of Russia or China is new to them.
Being in our sphere they know from experience and it often might have not agreed with them. Or the west gets blamed for being meddlesome, having a colonial attitude, and for not respecting their local culture, religion or customs.

And they might - with good reason at times - think we are arrogant, power-hungry and only care for their natural resources.

There's some truth in the idea out there, that Iraq wouldn't have been 'saved' from Saddam Huissein was it not for the country having oil in its ground. The people of Iran turned to the Ayatollah's not only because of Islam, but because they felt we stole their oil and normal folk didn't see a penny of the profits. People in South Africa might still hold a grudge against us for supporting the Apartheid-regime for too long.
Things like that.

There are two main differences with the situation after main-land Europe was freed from the Nazi occupation after WWII. First, that occupation was relatively short, so there was a civil society there to 'reboot' and secondly huge sums of money where maid available through the Marshall Plan, to rebuild our countries here.

 

3 hours ago, ErosWired said:

It’s just unfortunate that authoritarian structures are the breeding grounds of despots, and the result is human suffering.

Yep.
Democracy is the least bad of all forms of government, as a former professor who's lectures I followed was fond of saying. Perhaps therein lies the crux.
But..: If we in the west seem to communicate that it's perfect, it's inevitable people will get disappointed. And I think that's one of the things going on the former Warschau-Pact countries like Hungary and Serbia, and Poland for that matter. 

'The West' seemed to have won the Cold War, democracy and a free market where introduced in Eastern Europe and people might feel it's not paying up. And most of those people, those who weren't very old, had only known to live in a dictatorial and communist system. 

[ErosWired]

23 minutes ago, BareLover666 said:

Democracy is the least bad of all forms of government, as a former professor who's lectures I followed was fond of saying. 

Your professor was quoting Winston Churchill, who said, “Democracy is the worst form of government - except all of the others that have been tried.”

Which is as much as to say, all forms of government suck in some way, it’s just a question of which sucks the least, and that comes down to which has the most effective means if keeping the inevitable human impetus toward corrupt power, greed and control in check.

 I am under no illusions whatsoever about the ‘goodness’ of Western governments. You need only glance at the disgusting morass of liars, equivocators, adulterers, grifters and hypocrites that make up the American Congress to know what a dark underbelly America’s got. But those roots run deep.

 I was taking a post-graduate seminar in Early American Wars a few years ago and came across something that made my eyes pop. It was a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to one of the governors of one of the then western territories. In it, he cold-bloodedly explained the government’s strategy for dealing with the indigenous people in the west: The government would supply them with modern trade goods, foods and conveniences, at next-to-nothing prices, and then, once the natives had abandoned their traditional ways and become dependent on the material things of the new culture, those things would become so expensive or otherwise unobtainable that the natives would accept government control in exchange for those goods.

Boom. It was a plan for, essentially, making Native Americans addicted to European culture and then pimping them out for dime bags. So much for our noble Founding Fathers.

The thing is, though, no matter what the alternative motives may be, whether it’s to control oil or to sway politics for whatever reason, if the US sends troops to a country that country can be pretty sure we’re not going to claim it as the 51st State. We’re not in the habit of seizing other people’s countries for our own. (Donald Trump’s attempt to buy Greenland from the Danes doesn’t count. The entire world collectively rolled its eyes at that one.)

You’re right that people may become disappointed when democracy doesn’t play out for them as it does here - that they don’t suddenly achieve all the Blessings of Liberty for themselves. What they don’t realize is that this form of government is experimental - no one ever tried it this way before - and we’re still working out the bugs 250 years on. They also don’t realize (as many Americans fail to comprehend) that our system isn’t designed to guarantee us happiness. It’s designed to guarantee us the freedom to pursue happiness. Yet I think many people looking at us from the outside don’t realize how many of us are pursuing and not catching.

Still, some people are the sort that would not be happy if their destiny were left up to them, people for whom the yoke is preferable. Perhaps there are whole nations of such people. Perhaps that defines the existential schism between the peoples of the world, those who would live as slaves, and those who would not. Inasmuch as that might be true, it’s hard to see a way to reconcile it.

[Guest]

42 minutes ago, ErosWired said:

You need only glance at the disgusting morass of liars, equivocators, adulterers, grifters and hypocrites that make up the American Congress to know what a dark underbelly America’s got.

LOL. Well, if you've voted you are entitled to bitch about the elected representatives until the next electections. 😉  But I do feel adultery has nothing to do whatsoever with someones capabilities to be in a parliament or hold public office.  

Sometimes the reverse could be true actually. 

44 minutes ago, ErosWired said:

We’re not in the habit of seizing other people’s countries for our own. (Donald Trump’s attempt to buy Greenland from the Danes doesn’t count. The entire world collectively rolled its eyes at that one.)

Still not as bad as the 'grab 'm by the pussy' remark, and I think he was inspired by the purchase of Alaska from Russia when that country still had a Tsar. 
So besides causing an eye-roll and being only mildly funny it wasn't even an original idea. *Trump bashing ends*

 

47 minutes ago, ErosWired said:

What they don’t realize is that this form of government is experimental - no one ever tried it this way before - and we’re still working out the bugs 250 years on.

I think Churchill had it right, and we need to except democracy is not, and will never be perfect. And perhaps the belief in such any possible utopia could be as dangerous as all those systems whose name ends on -ism.