Everyone associated with this seems to be Jewish. Israel is a haven for criminals of all types, we just care extra about any haven for pedos and rapists, but white collar criminals are terrible, too
Excuse you, it's nothing like that. These fake internet points mean something real and tangible. Those fake internet points are just made up nonsense. (Heavy sarcasm)
Wilders received a Russia-Netherlands friendship pin, and posted the picture of him posing with it (in the Duma, IIRC) on this twitter account on Mar 1, 2018.
It is at least 50% NATOs fault. Mexico and Canada are democratic and sovereign nations, but if either would decide to allow chinese or russian military bases to be built in their country, you can safely asume the US would not hesitate to brake international laws and take military actions on those sovereign countries. NATO expanded closer and closer to russias border, and you can't just expect for Russia to be okay with that, just as the US wouldn't be okay with that.
My point is, Mexico and Canada could DECIDE to become allies of China and Russia. And then you would see the very same, how the US doesn't give a s** about their free decisions and invades.
Cuba once wanted to partner with USSR in hosting nuclear missiles (purely for defense purposes; you cannot invade with a missile) and US cared very much about it.
... cared only about the nukes. Conventional weapons remained in Cuba, and the USSR continued supplying them until the end in 1991. In 1978, for example, the USSR gave Cuba the newest MIG-27 fighter jets, and the United States did nothing about it, which proves the opposite of what Kremlin trolls are trying to argue.
The USSR's support for Cuba went far beyond anything any NATO member has seen since the end of the Cold War, yet there was no war against Cuba.
Yes, but nukes were removed from Cuba and that was the end of the military confrontation. Conventional weapons like fighter jets, air defense missiles, tanks, etc still remained and were upgraded over time.
Meanwhile, Central and Eastern Europe has seen no deployment of even conventional weapons beyond purely symbolic gestures like a few thousand lightly armed soldiers scattered across a region of more than 100 million people.
If Cuba is the blueprint, then NATO allies could arm Eastern Europe to the teeth.
Russia's war and invasion of Ukraine have brought NATO along more Russian border with new voluntary NATO members. And Russia claims it doesn't care about that/it isn't an issue.
You're argument is just a way to work backwards from the outcome Russia wants, not a reality.
Russia has said it is about Russian speakers. Russia has said it is about nazis. Russia will say anything to try to validate their war.
I'd go 25% NATOs fault. You'll note Ukraine didn't apply to join NATO, was not invited to join NATO so Russia saw it as easy game and invaded.
A problem with the west is they persuaded Ukraine to give up its nukes in return for a bit of paper saying the west would help protect it and then when push came to shove they were wimpy about it.
For decades the West, and Germany in particular, tried to turn Russia from an enemy into a trading partner and eventually an ally. Naive, in hindsight? Sure thing. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s absolutely no reason for Russia to be enemies with the West other than Putin’s imperialist ambitions.
The linked article is long on opinion, short on facts. The content does not support the headline. This is likely part of a Russian influence campaign (they did not start yesterday), aimed at de-legitimizing the protest movement and denying that Ukrainian citizens had any agency.
Are you suggesting that the Russians were using __ The Guardian __ as part of an influence campaign....in 2004? That's an extraordinary claim, for which you present no supporting evidence while blasting the article for being "short on facts". Pot, kettle, black. Here's Radio Free Europe on the subject:
https://www.rferl.org/a/1058543.html
it specifically calls out amounts paid to organizations in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine via the National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded via Congress and the State Department.
>Besides, did you know that the Kuchma government sent Ukrainian soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq
Yes, I know that. I bring it up anytime somebody says "Ukraine never invaded anybody!"
> Why would the US government want to overthrow a sympathetic regime?
To replace a sympathetic leader they DON'T control with an even more sympathetic leader they DO control. Wresting control of the political apparatus in a state often outlasts any singular "elected" Executive.
> Are you suggesting that the Russians were using __ The Guardian __ as part of an influence campaign....in 2004?
Definitely! Because they did the exact same thing in France, where I lived at that time, and probably other countries. I remember op-eds in French newspapers, Russia-friendly politicians on TV with the same talking points.
My wife and I go married on Oct 31st, 2004, the day of the first round of this election. These are things I can't forget, like her voting in Kyiv in her wedding dress.
Thinking the US ambassador could gather crowds of hundreds of thousands during long winter weeks all by himself, even with a few million USD is ridiculous, especially when you know the country. This is not at all how it works.
There was massive fraud during the second round, evidence of it was abundant, election monitors and independent organizations like OSCE witnessed it.
Yushchenko, controlled by the US government? There is no indication of that. And when his term ended, power was transferred peacefully to Yanukovych.
Ukrainians are educated people and just like anywhere else do not like to be told what to do from abroad, be it from Washington or Moscow. Now that the US government sides with that of Russia and Ukrainians continue to resist the pressure, it is even more obvious that these narratives were completely false.
We can debate the scale/scope/impact of the US's influence campaigns, but the outcomes are clear: they definitely contributed to souring US-Russian relations.
Here's why I consider this whole issue important, and it has very little to do with self-determination in Ukraine:
China is the greatest adversary the US has ever faced. Greater than the Soviet Union, IMO. We will need help from every major nation on the planet if we really intend to remain the hegemonic superpower. We had a narrow window circa 1999-2007 where we could have integrated an Authoritarian Russia into a security and economic framework that would put China in a vulnerable strategic position. We failed because we went full-bore on the ideological "Liberal democracy uber alles!" agenda, which was doomed to fail in Russia and has now wasted the monumental accomplishment of the Sino-Soviet Split. The Eurasian landmass is now dominated by China-Russia-Iran, three powers with internal lines of communication. Read Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard, and what we've done is exactly how to LOSE the game.
https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/36/36669B789...Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an "antihegemonic" coalition united
not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.
Well golly-gee-willikers, I daresay we've thoroughly punted that into the stands.
Note that ZBig goes on to prescribe solutions that I heavily disagree with. But he was able to cogently articulate the problem.
> We had a narrow window circa 1999-2007 where we could have integrated an Authoritarian Russia into a security and economic framework that would put China in a vulnerable strategic position.
Says who?
Top Russian diplomats, starting with some of the former foreign ministers themselves, maintain that the disintegration of Russian democracy is the fault of the former KGB and military power structures, which enjoyed privileged positions in the Soviet system. They were sidelined when the USSR fell apart, but by the mid-1990s, had crawled back and consolidated enough power to begin wiping out all other competition, from political parties to the free press.
If any blame lies with external actors, they say, it is for failing to support and pressure Russia enough to develop into a modern European state. Instead, the US and the EU continued to butter the KGB-military faction well into the 2010s, doing their best to ignore war crimes, human rights abuses, attacks on political freedoms, the suppression of political rights, and the outright murder of political opponents.
There was no "narrow window" in 1999-2007. The window for keeping Russia on a path toward becoming a normal European state closed around 1995. 1999 marks the year Putin rose to the highest levels of government, and by that point the outcome was pretty much decided. By spring 2000, Putin had openly raided and taken over NTV, the last major independent television channel in Russia. In 2002, the powers of the security services were expanded and notorious "extremism" laws were adopted, which have been used to suppress everything from opposition parties to NGOs. In 2003, Putin took over oil and gas company Yukos and arrested and imprisoned its owner, the richest man in Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
By the end of 2003, Russia had no independent national media, no effective parliamentary opposition, and instead had laws enabling repression under legal cover and security services embedded in political governance. Property rights, even for the richest and most influential people in the country, had become conditional on loyalty to Putin.
Russian democrats, who had lost their influence by the mid-1990s, could have become partners of the US and EU, but the KGB-military elite - never. Even suggesting this signals an absolute lack of understanding of who they are and where they come from. For them, challenging the US and expanding Russia through coercion and war to the full territorial extent of the former Eastern Bloc is the endgame. They don't give two shits about China. They want a return to the privileged heyday of the KGB-military elites in the 1970s, when Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain and the USSR was believed to be an equal to the US. This is the "normal state of the world" of his youth that Putin desperately wants to return to.
Antagonism toward the US lies at their very core, and no amount of buttering will change that. The possibility of cooperation is merely an illusion they sell you to blind you to the next move they make against you.
>There was no "narrow window" in 1999-2007. The window for keeping Russia on a path toward becoming a normal European state closed around 1995.
Expecting Russia to ever become a "normal European state" is the main mistake. My entire point is to accept that Russia is authoritarian. Consider the examples of Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, especially Egypt: nobody preaches liberal democracy as the solution to getting Egypt to do what we want. Instead we came to an understanding with the military elite, who we've essentially bribed (via foreign aid and other ways) to keep a lid on their population and avoid direct conflict with Israel. Figure out what the KGB-military elite want, and give it to them in exchange for a shift in their security posture. The Soviet dinosaurs want to suck the Baltic states dry? Go for it....but we want them to step up their mobilization exercises in Siberia for the next decade. And we want them to start doing joint US-Russian nuclear submarine patrols in the East China Sea. Otherwise we can't be friends....and the last time we weren't friends, it didn't end well for Russia. More carrot, less stick...but still some stick.
If it gets us one step closer to Russia's nuclear arsenal (the largest in the world with the most capable ICBMs) possibly pointing at Chinese cities instead of the West, it's worth it. The price might include "fluffing the Russian national ego". Instead US think-tankers and statesmen have done their best to trample on it....with predictable results.
One of the best opportunities for improving US-Russian relations was 9/11 and especially the 2004 Beslan school attack: there was recognition of a mutual problem of "Islamic terrorism", and coordinating to fight it was a part of thawing the adversarial relationship between the security apparatuses of the two powers. Read the joint statement from Bush and Putin from 2002:
> For them, challenging the US and expanding Russia through coercion and war to the full territorial extent of the former Eastern Bloc is the endgame.
The former Eastern Bloc should have been Finlandized: economic intermediaries between Russia and Western Europe, with just enough domestic military capability to discourage Russian hard power, but no actual US military alliance integration to keep the Russians from getting jittery either.
> They don't give two shits about China.
Which is why after the Sino-Soviet split Russia and the Soviet Union before it always kept high-readiness divisions on the Chinese border. The Russians know that China isn't really their friend. Russia is a European country, they shouldn't be bosom buddies with the Far East.
> They want a return to the privileged heyday of the KGB-military elites in the 1970s
They were on that path, printing money selling natgas and oil to Europe.
> Antagonism toward the US lies at their very core, and no amount of buttering will change that. The possibility of cooperation is merely an illusion they sell you to blind you to the next move they make against you.
The Russians didn't unilaterally pull out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, the US did. Then we went and followed that up by announcing we wanted ABM sites on Russia's doorstep to protect Europe from "errant Iranian nuclear missiles" which was obvious bullshit.
Look, I understand that everyone in Eastern Europe has a well-earned eternal hatred of the Russians since you are barely a generation removed from their oppression, but do you guys not notice all the ridiculous antagonistic shit we Americans do that is entirely optional?
> Expecting Russia to ever become a "normal European state" is the main mistake. My entire point is to accept that Russia is authoritarian.
This is exactly the mistake that the US and the EU made: treating Russia not as an ordinary European country from which respect for human rights, free elections and other political, social, and economic rights should be expected, but as a special country entitled to do more than others. The KGB-military circles have ruthlessly exploited this naivety to destroy Russian democracy. They are happy to play uncivilized savages if that means that the US and EU give them freer rein to plunder and subjugate their neighbors and beyond.
> Figure out what the KGB-military elite want, and give it to them in exchange for a shift in their security posture.
In their wildest dreams, they want total world domination, to assume the role of the Third Rome and the shining beacon of the entire humanity. In practical terms, this means Central and Eastern Europe directly incorporated into Russia and the entire Western Europe turned into anti-American pawns, like East Germany was and Belarus currently is. The Middle East would be divided with Iran, and Asia with China, leaving countries like the Philippines and Australia for China to take over, while others like Japan are turned anti-American through subversion. In the US, they want to fuel instability and separatism through ethnic, social and racial conflicts to keep Americans busy with holding their country together while Russia rules the world.
In short, they want you dead. They want an endless "Los Angeles '92" across the entire US while the Russian kleptocrats plunder the world. The bare minimum they are openly demanding now with ultimatums like the one presented in 2021 is a return to Europe as it was in 1989, half of Europe victimized, the other half terrified that they will be next.
> The former Eastern Bloc should have been Finlandized: economic intermediaries between Russia and Western Europe, with just enough domestic military capability to discourage Russian hard power, but no actual US military alliance integration to keep the Russians from getting jittery either.
... because neutrality worked so well in the 1930s, and for Belarus and Ukraine in the present day as well? Neutrality allowed Germany and the USSR to pick off their neighbors one by one without fear of a broader response. It has enabled Russia to do the same in the present era, minimizing the risks it faces when attacking a country. Essentially, it all boils down to the fact that your mental image of Russia is wrong. You believe they are scared of their European neighbors and focus on appeasing Russia by castrating their neighbors, whereas Russia is playing up its security concerns solely to shape the battlefield in its favor for its expansionist ambitions.
> Then we went and followed that up by announcing we wanted ABM sites on Russia's doorstep to protect Europe from "errant Iranian nuclear missiles" which was obvious bullshit.
The problem that Russians had with the US ABM site in Romania was due to deepening US-Romanian defense cooperation which reduces Russia's opportunities to turn Romania into another puppet state like Belarus at the very least, not because the site posed any danger to Russia. The Romanian ABM site lies on the direct flight path between Iran and large US military bases in Germany and makes perfect sense that the US would want to have an ABM site there. The missiles at the Romanian site are unable to reach Russian missile launching sites, nor are they on their flight path.
Examples like this clearly show that you have been consuming Russian propaganda without pulling out a globe and a measuring tape to check whether there is any actual credibility to the prepackaged narratives.
> In the US, they want to fuel instability and separatism through ethnic, social and racial conflicts to keep Americans busy with holding their country together while Russia rules the world.
If they want it they can have it. Not that Russia makes enough babies to have the manpower necessary to achieve their megalomaniac dreams. Most Americans are quite isolationist; I rate Woodrow Wilson as the worst US President ever because he violated the Monroe Doctrine and dragged us into Europe's problems...which still costs us blood and treasure a century later. We have the advantage of geography: two gigantic oceans protect us East/West, a frozen forest wasteland to the North, and a stretch of desert to the South. Our homeland is unassailable by conventional means (especially if we keep our Navy well-funded) and we can also sit behind our nuclear arsenal.
>Asia would be divided with China, with countries like the Philippines and Australia left for China to invade and take over
This is a good indication someone isn't a serious thinker and is likely stuck in a WW2-ish mental framework when populations were much smaller and it was easier to "paint the map". Nobody in their right mind would genuinely attempt to invade the Philippines in the 21st century, with its population over 100 million and a history of violent insurgencies. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
I'm familiar with the basics of Dugin's ideology but I haven't read his work yet. As I understand it, all the English translations are unofficial but I suppose they are better than waiting for a formal one.
>Arguments like this clearly show that you have been consuming Russian propaganda without pulling out a globe and a ruler to check whether there is any actual credibility to the prepackaged narratives.
I would challenge you to do the same. Not once in this discussion have you made any critical analysis of the US's actions, statements, or motivations. NOT. ONCE.
>The Romanian ABM sites lies on the direct flight path between Iran and large US military bases in Germany and makes perfect sence that the US would want to have ABM site there. The missiles at the Romanian site are unable to reach Russian missile launching sites, nor are they on their flight path.
So ABMs in Romania make perfect sense to you based on a forecast future threat of Iranian nukes (which they don't have) on Iranian missiles with ranges of 3,000km+ (which they didn't have at the time). This was a proactive, preventative measure for the US.
ABM sites in Romania could also, forecasting into the future, be home to hypersonic missiles which could engage Russian launch sites with little or no warning and completely destabilize their MAD capability. Very similar to when we stuck missiles on their doorstep in Turkey in the 1960s....ya know, that stupidly provocative decision that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis? That is a far bigger security concern for Russia than the destruction of bases in Germany is for the US. So applying your logic for justifying the US action, why shouldn't the Russians ALSO take proactive, preventative measures against that?
Here's a simple sanity check:
Does the US have legitimate national security concerns? Does Germany have legitimate national security concerns? Does Romania have legitimate national security concerns? Does Russia have legitimate national security concerns?
If your answer to the first three is "Yes" and your answer to the fourth is "No", you probably think everyone who disagrees with you is a Russian propagandist.
> Our homeland is unassailable by conventional means (especially if we keep our Navy well-funded) and we can also sit behind our nuclear arsenal.
Unless you intend to nuke the White House, the nuclear arsenal remains entirely useless against the political subversion that Russia has very successfully used to destabilize and isolate the US. The official US envoy was recently caught advising Russians on how to manipulate the US president. Who needs tanks and missiles when you have reach like this? Without a single bullet being fired at the US, the sitting president is rolling out red carpets for Putin and praising him as genius while verbally attacking the Canadian prime minister and openly undermining Canada's sovereignty.
> I would challenge you to do the same. Not once in this discussion have you made any critical analysis of the US's actions, statements, or motivations. NOT. ONCE.
My entire initial reply was a criticism of the US and EU naivety in thinking that buttering the KGB-military circles could lead to long-term positive outcomes, an idea you seemed to share. Overall, when it comes to Russia's relations with its European neighbors, the US is simply not an important factor. It is a question of sovereignty, enlightenment and other European values versus Russian imperialism, which is focused on finding ways to suppress them both at home and abroad. The people of Europe want to mind their own business, but Russia will not leave them alone. For 80 years, the US was a partner in this. Nowadays not so much, but the long-standing confrontation continues nevertheless.
> ABM sites in Romania could also, forecasting into the future, be home to hypersonic missiles which could engage Russian launch sites with little or no warning and completely destabilize their MAD capability.
Russian ICBMs are primarily in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East, many thousands of kilometers from Romania. Not even hypersonic missiles would pose a threat. The danger from such sites is political in nature: closer US-Romanian defense cooperation directly threatens Russian ambitions in Romania, because the US would then be more likely to assist Romania if it comes under Russian political, economic or military attack.
> Does the US have legitimate national security concerns? Does Germany have legitimate national security concerns? Does Romania have legitimate national security concerns? Does Russia have legitimate national security concerns?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. But focusing on Russia's overplayed "security concerns," when Russia has been the main aggressor in the region for centuries, is out of balance and unjustified. It is like writing about fire safety by centering the narrative on the inconvenience suffered by the arsonist.
I am now convinced that Russian complaints about supposed US influence campaigns, “NATO expansion” etc. were never sincere. Russia has conducted info-ops in the West forever, during the Cold War and after. If there's an expansionist power here in Europe, it's Russia. Liberal democracy stands in its way so it's no wonder Russia fights against it in every way, both at home and abroad. Authoritarian regimes are notorious for using grievances, real or made-up, to justify their authoritarian rule and hostile actions toward other countries. Nazi Germany: Versailles treaty, supposed oppression of Germans in Sudetenland; Hungary: Trianon treaty; Serbia: Ottoman rule; China: opium wars. I could go on but the last example is interesting: Russia took land from China in the 19th century, yet China only talks about the actions of Western nations. Which shows IMO that these grievances are a mere tool to advance geopolitical interests and should not be taken too seriously. Many moves were made to bring Russia and West closer: Russian leaders showed repeatedly by their actions that they were not interested.
There is not shortage of narratives Russian propagandists disseminate via influencers or useful idiots, tuned for the appropriate audience. You identify as a pacifist? Russia is a peaceful nation, it's its adversaries that are the warmongers! (Don't ask how Russia became so large.) You oppose colonialism? Russia stands against US hegemony, demands a multi-polar world! (In reality Russia behaves as a colonial empire and has a long history of oppression of the nations it has conquered.) You identify as a conservative? Russia is the main defender of order and traditional Christian values! (Well, the Russian Orthodox Church is just an arm of the state security services; church attendance is low; crime and divorce rates are high; Russia has no problem with Islamic regimes like the Taliban, Iran, Hamas or Kadyrov's Chechnya.)
I do not deny the threat China poses and that the way the West approached globalization was naive. Indeed, China has close ties with regimes of Russia, Iran and North Korea. Given this reality, what I don't understand is the policies of the current US administration. China is churning out missiles, warships etc. at an alarming rate, yet the US reduces military spending. China's reach via TikTok is growing yet the US administration does next to nothing about it. The US sided with Russia and North Korea on UN votes about Ukraine (https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160456). Trump antagonizes traditional EU allies, except those with authoritarian tendencies like Orban's Hungary. On the other hand, he has only kind words for Putin, Xi, Kim; his only complaint seems to be that he's not a member of their club.
> Trump antagonizes traditional EU allies, except those with authoritarian tendencies like Orban's Hungary.
Trump in his first term warned Europe about sucking on the teet of Russian natgas, and those "traditional allies" laughed in his face. He told Europe to meet its NATO treaty obligations and increase military spending, and they dragged their feet.
Now Europe's industry is struggling under substantially-increased energy input costs, and has been caught flat-footed with its armories empty while trying to subsidize the largest land conflict on the continent since WW2. An economic and quasi-military bloc with 500+ million people is begging 350 million people on another continent to protect them from a mere 140 million drunk & corrupt Russians.
....and you don't understand why Trump, who has a fragile ego and is well-known for holding grudges, is antagonistic to the feckless idiot empty-suit bureaucrats who manage Europe? He's a thin-skinned bully and now he's gonna walk all over Europe to do whatever is most advantageous (in his perception) for the US....but it's only possible because European leadership is just as weak as he thinks it is.
Plus he's trying to dump The Ukraine Problem in their lap because the US doesn't really have the capacity to square off against China and manage...well, possibly ANY other additional conflict. If our actions to counter China don't make any sense or seem incongruent, that's because most of the administration is simply too incompetent to get the results needed, even if they understand the nature and scope of the problem.
European leaders are far from blameless. I fully agree European countries should have weaned themselves from Russian gas and ramped up military spending much sooner. Meanwhile for a long time the US retained control of NATO military structures in Europe. And recently Trump granted a waiver allowing Hungary to continue importing Russian oil. And there is talk from the US about reviving Nordstream, that both Trump and Biden harshly (and fairly IMO) criticized.
Trump being thin-skinned does not explain much. The latest strategy document where the US administration explicitly says it will do its utmost to bring far-right parties to power in Europe goes far beyond that. It's clearly not just Trump. And again, it definitely does not help keep friends to face China. Neither does twisting Ukraine's arm to accept a disastrous deal in exchange for vague promises of riches for Trump and his clan. History shows appeasing an aggressor invites more aggression. Russia's partner, China, is watching, will sense weakness and draw conclusions neither Europe nor America will like.
To be fair, in 90s-10s the West invaded multiple Soviet and Russian allies (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, as an example) using weakness of Russian economy an inability to help the allies at the time. That was not a friendly act. USSR withdrew from Eastern Germany in the end of 80s as a gesture of good will in hope to improve the relations, but it was never reciprocated.
> To be fair, in 90s-10s the West invaded multiple Soviet and Russian allies (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, as an example) using weakness of Russian economy an inability to help the allies at the time.
The NATO intervention in the Yugoslav wars lasted only a few months, killed fewer people than the Serbs executed on some of their most productive single weekends, and brought a definitive end to a decade of civil wars. Please explain how this is negative and what reason Russians have to bitch about it all the time.
If anything, the intervention should have taken place far sooner. Many, many civilian lives could have been saved while NATO allies spent years merely watching people in Europe being murdered for their ethnic background.
> USSR withdrew from Eastern Germany in the end of 80s as a gesture of good will in hope to improve the relations, but it was never reciprocated.
Gesture of goodwill, gimme a break. The USSR ran out of money and ceased to exist entirely (1991) before the last Soviet forces left Germany (1994).
So what? Everyone acts in to further their interests. NATO expands because it's in NATO's interest to do so. Russia says that this expansion is not in Russia's interest. Why only say the Russian part and leave out the NATO part?
Furthermore, if having an interest in something gives the right to use military power to achieve that interest then the argument applies to everyone.
The point about foreign bases in Canada or Mexico gets repeated a lot online, but what is the ultimate point? The USA would not like it, but it's also not a political reality. On the other hand a NATO build out IS a political reality.
So I think rather than focusing purely on what one country wishes it's better to analyze things in terms of what the political realities are and which is better.
In that sense NATO is meant to be a deterrence. Russia doesn't like that. If you ask yourself whose vision of the future is better then the answer is clear. A world of where rule of law is the norm and invasions are deterred is preferable. There has been tremendous peace and prosperity in the EU because of NATO and people have just gotten used to it. They have taken for granted the cost and sacrifice that this peace came from.
However, simply saying that Russia has an interest in not having NATO on their border is almost tautological. Of course they don't want that, but so what. Peace only works if it's enforceable.
> The point about foreign bases in Canada or Mexico gets repeated a lot online, but what is the ultimate point? The USA would not like it, but it's also not a political reality.
The point is, that the US would do actually the very same as russia, and break international law. And regarding political reality, this already happened in history with the Cuba crisis. The point is actually, that the west uses a moral highground to condemn russias aggression, while it would be doing the very same. It falls in the "rules for thee but not for me" category. And if you hold somebody accountable on standards that would you wouldn't be able to hold up for yourself, your are - by definition - a hipocrite.
Hypocrisy? I said each side acts in their interest: NATO and Russia. My point was only to ask whose interest would readers on HN prefer prevail?
It's a simple question. Do we want to live in a world where Russia achieves their strategic goals or do we prefer to live in a world where NATO achieves their strategic goals?
NATO expansion doesn't happen illegally. It's completely voluntary. It's a defensive alliance meant as a deterrence. And countries in NATO all enjoy much higher standards of living than non-NATO countries. NATO countries all have laws to protect their citizens and they enjoy peace from invasion.
I get that Russia doesn't want that. But my point was so what? I never really denied that issue. Everybody is acting in their best interest. It's just that NATOs interests and values are also the same as my own.
There's no hypocrisy here. There's just a good and bad guy in this case. I don't see the problem here.
>NATO expands because it's in NATO's interest to do so.
I highly recommend reading the 1997 US Senate debate about NATO expansion. There were a number of experienced statesmen who vehemently disagreed that NATO expansion was in NATO's interest.
> A world of where rule of law is the norm and invasions are deterred is preferable.
Except we don't have that world. From Iraq in 2003 to especially the NATO air campaign in Libya in 2011, we've long since demonstrated that there are no rules, and invasions have no consequences.
And yet when Finland actually joined NATO, Russia said they had no problem with that. Something doesn't add up in your story - and it happens to be the same story told by Russian trolls and useful idiots.
There were a ton of votes cast to stop kids from being vaccinated against childhood diseases, to block funding to the rural hospitals serving those communities, raise taxes via tariffs, and to let government accounts troll with memes. Those communities decided those were all worth it if brown and black people suffered.
This "poor" farmer claims to be sad about it in front of his flags of support of the administration. He refuses to understand what he actually voted for. But he is an adult that absolutely voted for it https://dataviz.whro.org/virginia-farmer-on-edge/index.html
As a US citizen, I disagree. Lots of votes cast November 2024, resulting in both a popular vote and Electoral College victory for Trump. He had a term before, he was impeached twice, and indicted several times. We voted for it several different times and ways.
At least the federal government loves to contract McKinsey, so a lot of the profit still ends up outside of the country. I didn't find any quickly accessible data on the state government in Schleswig-Holstein, though.
>so a lot of the profit still ends up outside of the country.
I have no idea how you come up with that corollary. All big traditional consultancies are partnerships and any profit is distributed among the partners. If a country (e.g. Germany) makes a loss, then profits from other countries will flow into the country to make up for this.
Every team I have worked on so far, if using AWS you had 50-100% of the developers with the knowledge and credentials (and usually the confidence) to troubleshoot/just fix it/replace it.
Every team with dedicated hardware in a data center it was generally 1-2 people who would have fixed stuff quickly, no matter the size of the company (small ones, of course - so 10-50 devs). And that's with available replacement hardware.
I'm not even one of the "cloud is so great" people - but it you're generally doing software it's actually a lot less friction.
And while the ratio of cost difference may sound bad, it's generally not. Unless we're talkign huge scale, you can buy a lot of AWS crap for the yearly salary of a single person.
You said developers have the knowledge and credentials (and thus the work) of managing your infra, and a moment later basically asserted you're saving money on the salary for the sysadmin. This is the actual lie you got sold on.
AWS isn't going to help you setup your security, you have to do it yourself. Previously a sysadmin would do this, now it's the devs. They aren't going to monitor your database performance. Previously a sysadmin would do this, now it's the devs. They aren't going to setup your networking. Previously a sysadmin would do this, ...
Managing hardware and updating hosts is maybe 10% of the work of a sysadmin. You can't buy much on 1/10th of a sysadmins salary, and even the things you can, the quality and response time are generally going to be shit compared to someone who cares about your company (been there).
Yes, please continue explaining the job I did in the past to me.
It doesn't change anything, especially as I did not blatantly argue cloud=good,hardware=bad. That is a completely different question.
My point is that given some circumstances, you need a lot less specialized deep knowledge if all your software just works[tm] on a certain level of the stack upwards. Everyone knows the top 1/3 of the stack and you pay for the bottom 2/3 part.
I didn't mean to say "let's replace a sysadmin with some AWS stuff", my point was "100k per year on AWS makes a lot of small companies run".
Also my experience was with having hardware in several DCs around the world, and we did not have people there (small company, but present in at least 4 countries) - so we had to pay for remote hands and the experience was mostly bad . Maybe my bosses chose bad DCs, or maybe I'd trust sysadmins at "product companies" more than those working as remote hands at a hoster...
> Every team I have worked on so far, if using AWS you had 50-100% of the developers with the knowledge and credentials (and usually the confidence) to troubleshoot/just fix it/replace it.
is that because they were using AWS so hired people who knew AWS?
I would personally have far more confidence in my ability to troubleshoot or redeploy a dedicated server than the AWS services to replace it.
> Every team with dedicated hardware in a data center it was generally 1-2 people who would have fixed stuff quickly, no matter the size of the company (small ones, of course - so 10-50 devs). And that's with available replacement hardware.
There are lots of options for renting dedicated hardware, that the service provider will maintain,. Its still far cheaper than AWS. Even if you have redundancy for everything its still a lot cheaper.
Yeah I was taken a back as well, "sell gold? To whom??" To the people buying gold, is not reasonable to have to pinpoint who exactly that might be given there is not shortage.
That is because of both of your biases (which is understandable) and me, not specifying why I am asking.
"it would be astonishing if they _didn't_ sell my data."
If the "who" was answered with "... to Kim Jong Un, glorious leader of the DPRK" you might raise a brow. That is probably not what they meant.
Maybe the author meant "... to the legal buyer of the new company, as part of the content of the company"? Maybe they meant "... to anyone willing to pay a price, legally or illegally"?
I wondered what scenario the author had in mind. It's a reasonable question. To me, the implications are quite different. You might of course disagree.
Obviously to anyone willing to pay a price. Have you ever looked at those cookie banners? "In order to give you the best experience, we share your data with our 759 partners..."
I’m not sure why you read their question as being either surprised or disbelieving?
I’ve worked in marketing enough to know that all sorts of less-interesting data gets bought and sold, yet alone financial data, but even if limiting the context to “for marketing purposes” I wouldn’t know, and would be interested in being told, which companies actually are buying that sort of financial information.
And as the user has now explained in a comment further down the thread, they weren’t limiting their curiosity to just marketing profiling so there’s an even wider scope to their question.
But hey, easier to just call them naive than to give them the benefit of the doubt and engage constructively.
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