Mirth I'm not in favour of this continuing as the outlines of the end game are clear, particularly with the US placing their thumbs on the scale to suit their whims but I do feel like the dialogue here sees Eastern Europe as a bunch of NPCs.

Maybe this wasn't aimed at me, but I don't reckon I treat people in Eastern Europe (not the term I'd use here) much different from Australians or Brits . I've never visited Ukraine, but I've visited six of the nine former Warsaw Pact nations. I've seen more Russia and Poland than the other countries, and I've taught myself a fair bit of Polish and Russian in the past.

I think of guys like the Russian soldiers I drank with in Chita 15–20 years ago when I hear of another 100,000 dead. Pure evil in the form of talkative frat boys who like to get very drunk and call each other gay while arm-wrestling, singing and hugging, then try to fix your hangover with a cup of sugary tea.

Yeah I'm an Australian, I didn't grow up in the Soviet Bloc so it's true, I can't share the deeper feelings of people who did, but I do recognise and know them, and have had plenty more personal stories firsthand.

Mirth Empires - in any era - tend to impose dominant cultural norms which gradually erode minority groups.

I'm not sure this is true. I'm no great fan of imperialism, but historical, precolonial empires have often been extremely diverse, multilingual, multiethnic, even multifaith. It seems to me that loose affiliations are, on the whole, much better for community autonomy and cultural preservation than strong national identities built on false histories. Colonial empires combined the worst aspects of imperialism with such national identities associated with the colonial homeland, i.e., white, Christian, etc. These identitarian structures are just about guaranteed to produce fascism, genocide, and systemic violence and discrimination. From my perspective, it seems even those nation-states founded on ostensibly noble principles of independence, self determination, and cultural preservation will fall into this trap.

I'm obviously biased, because various independence movements saw my family displaced multiple times over multiple generations due to the strong ethnonationalist tendencies that they inevitably manifest.

Gazza M DOGE is exactly what I predicted it would be from the day it was announced - a PR campaign to manufacture enough consent to siphon off as much of the public purse as possible

Definitely a backdoor for his many companies. He has had Starlink people call the FAA directly about modernising their satellite systems for tracking planes. I imagine he will have his other tech companies offer support on analytics and data management across the government. Which could be helpful of course, but it’s corruption in the open.

Lol.

Mirth maybe they know something the rest of us don't

Sounds like a waste of time for politicians

In fairness, reasons to hope in the US are limited right now. Pretty ironic that vote when you think of it

I'm sure a lot of people are going to suffer, and die as a direct result of his policies, and I feel sorrow for them/us as a country. But I'm glad that at least the victims will cut across both political parties so even his voters are going to feel the pain their vote has brought them.

International Day of Hope, sounds like the type of nonsense that would come out of the UN....

Moving in the right direction at least.

Like I said moving in the right direction, still miles away from any kind of agreement.

"tHe wOKe lEfT iS bLOCkiNG fReE sPeEcH oN cAMpUs"

Burnwinter you know what’s interesting is this isn’t a new idea. I used to hear my conservative friends complain that liberal arts co@@eges blocked their speech. This was twenty years ago.
The feeling was that they weren’t freely able to talk about Christianity, being anti-LGBTQI, gun ownership, small government etc. traditional conservative stuff, not even the current insanity.

Claudius The feeling was that they weren’t freely able to talk about Christianity, being anti-LGBTQI, gun ownership, small government etc. traditional conservative stuff, not even the current insanity.

I remember having robust conversations with pro-life kids (and I'm sure there are some OMITT members who are pro-life, I'm just using it as an example) at university back in the 00s.

Reality in Australia was back then, and is now, that there are ample "safe spaces" for conservatives on campus, but they don't much like it when you get stuck into them. They'll still shut you down if you mention Marx in your MBA seminar.

This however is the blatant suppression of free speech in support of blatant war crimes and genocide. I'm not sure how much clearer it could be.

jones I don't know why you bring the Deveselu shield into the cold war argument or even the RIM-161. The RIM was operational like 2-3 years after U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Trearty. Also like I said, Deveselu hosts only three launchers, which is laughable in the context of nuclear war. Even if modified, it wouldn't be able to stop a Russian nuclear barrage. And like I said It is almost impossible to use SM-3 missiles for offensive strikes — they lack explosive warheads. Even Russia knows Deveselu can't stop their ICBMs, but they use it as an excuse to justify the shit they do.

"Syria for 14 years, Burkina Faso or Mali" you're just throwing out anything at this point.

Yeah, I'm just casually throwing a few of the conflicts they've fueled, while you conveniently ignore the other 20 wars they've triggered in Eastern Europe, none caused by NATO.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the West or the U.S., but this whataboutism people use to defend Russia is getting ridiculous.

Yes, some NATO countries and the U.S. have done their fair share of shit, but put together, it's still nothing compared to what Russia has done and continues to do.
They are, and always will be, an imperialist country, Fuck em all is what I'm saying.

If you really believe countries are independent and sovereign and can do what they want I don't think there's much common ground to find, we'll have to agree to disagree mate.

But if they aren't, then why are the 2 of us even talking about European colonialism in Africa?
If the strong do what they want, and the weak suffer what they must, then we should all just lay down and take it, right?
No response, no resistance — just accept imperialism and shut the fuck up.