420blazeit69 [he/him]

Putin offers truce if Ukraine exits Russian-claimed areas and drops NATO bid. Kyiv rejects it

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised Friday to “immediately” order a cease-fire in Ukraine and start negotiations if Kyiv began withdrawing troops from the four regions annexed by Moscow in 2022 and renounced plans to join NATO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected what he called an ultimatum by Putin to surrender more territory… [the offer] didn’t include any new demands. The Kremlin has said before that Kyiv should recognize its territorial gains and drop its bid to join NATO.

Russia occupies most, but not all, of the territory in question. They are winning the war, and this is the type of offer you make when you’re winning. As the article notes, this is not some new request; this has been on the table for a while.

Ukraine is losing, but slowly. They could take this deal now, saving their own people’s lives, or they could continue sending men into the meat grinder and wind up with this or worse in maybe another year.

Besides seeking to join NATO, Ukraine wants Russian forces out of its territory, including the Crimean Peninsula that was illegally annexed in 2014; the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity; and that Russia be held accountable for war crimes and for Moscow to pay reparations to Kyiv.

Compare Russia’s terms to this – a totally delusional offer for the losing side to suggest.

He will now be held in a grim adult detention centre [article later notes he was sentenced to a juvenile facility]

a top performing student at school

no scrap of evidence for this was produced

a hellhole adult detention centre [in the same sentence where the article notes he’s going to juvee]

If this was a story about, say, a January 6 defendant, these types of editorial decisions would jump out at people as an obvious sign of significant bias. Pull the exact same rhetorical tricks against a Bad Country, though, and most simply accept it at face value.

Arseny Turbin, who committed his alleged crimes when he was just 14, has been branded as Russia’s ‘youngest terrorist’ following his conviction…

Judge Oleg Shishov in Oryol found him guilty of ‘participation in the activities of an organisation that is recognised as terrorist’…

[His mother] said ‘We will appeal the verdict….we did not expect this outcome at all.’

There was a trial – “no scrap of evidence” is a bald-faced lie.

If your theory (which really would have no scrap of evidence behind it) is that this was a kangaroo court, why would his mom be talking about appeals, and why would there be an appeal available in the first place?

Real reporting would have been, at minimum, getting a trial transcript and evaluating the evidence yourself. Or finding a Russian lawyer who was familiar with the proceedings and interviewing them. But of course MSN didn’t do any of this, because this isn’t reporting, this is propaganda.

“Oh you think killing literally Hitler would be OK? Think again”

You are arguing against killing Hitler. You’re right that this sounds stupid, because it is.

But your whole post is really beside the point: there are absolutely, positively, beyond any doubt politicians who could justifiably be assassinated. Set aside guesswork about how such an act would have played out – the act itself would obviously be justified. It would in no way make you worse than Hitler, or even anywhere near as reprehensible.

At this point your faced with 2 options. Assassination or choosing the lesser evil.

The most absurd false dichotomy I’ve seen in a while, nice.

“Honestly the first choice just makes you the greater evil.”

“Killing Hitler just makes you worse than Hitler” – outstanding logic. Literally everyone outside of hardcore pacifists would agree there are certain politicians that it is OK to assassinate.

The article mentions that additional missiles were shot down, but it sounds like at least one hit where it was aimed.

Russia has summoned the US ambassador over a “barbaric” missile attack that hit a beach in Crimea, killing at least four, including children, and injuring 151.

I have yet to see even a story from the U.S. about what military target was supposed to be on a crowded beach.

I think you have a little of that, and a little of this showing that the giga-rich didn’t get that way because they are these perfect human multi-specialty geniuses like they all claim.

Sure, maybe they’re pretty bright in one or two areas. Many successful people are. But they also do real stupid, shortsighted shit like this all the time. They got as rich as they did not on merit, but on family wealth, luck, and exploiting the labor of others.

OK, Shouldn’t people see the real cost of war and how brutal it is?

I think people can and do already see snippets of that without a dedicated sub. A whole sub of it seems gratuitous and likely to raise problems others have pointed out.

A little can be good for keeping perspective, a lot usually turns into gawking or worse.

This case’s existence is one indicator that the U.S. is much closer to a decaying empire than a fascist state. In a fascist state your union leaders wouldn’t argue a case before the Supreme Court – your union leaders would be shot. The U.S. will still do all the horrors of fascism abroad, but that’s “just” imperialism. At home, there are still many of the elements of bourgeois democracy.

If they make it illegal to strike and make you punishable in courts for it… Then at what point do people just start killing their boss instead?

Probably after they start with work-to-rule, slowdowns, sabotage, etc.

Huey Newton was not what you would call a good speaker. In fact, he had a kind of high pitched monotonous voice and his rambling for three hours about the negation of the negation was sheer disaster. People walked out in droves. Instead of criticizing what was happening, most of the Party members defended it. When I said that Huey needed speaking lessons they jumped down my throat. When Huey changed his title from defense minister to the ridiculous “Supreme Commander” and then to the even more ridiculous “Supreme Servant,” damn near nobody said a word. That was one of the big problem in the Party. Criticism and self-criticism were not encouraged, and the little that was given often was not taken seriously. Constructive criticism and self-criticism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization. Without them, people tend to drown in their mistakes, and not learn from them.

One thing I see fairly often on here is the idea that trying to refine the presentation of leftist ideas = ceding ground to liberals, or watering leftist ideas down. The importance of good presentation is somewhere between “extremely helpful” and “absolutely crucial.”

The BPP seems to have left a lot of potential untapped because they didn’t care enough about how people received their ideas. We should learn from that.

You’re going to bat for the collective punishment of the Cuban people. When is the collective punishment of civilians appropriate in your mind?

You’re also supporting a policy that has failed to achieve its stated result for 65 years. What other long-term policy failures do you support?

“If you add actual antisemitism with stuff that isn’t antisemitism, whaddaya know, line goes up”

democRATs

We really don’t have to adopt 2000-era right wing crank aesthetics to criticize Democrats.

An underrated (to me) issue is how over time they’ve written in more and more justifications for the horrors of the Imperium. They’ve made it “yeah this is dark but you kind of see why they do it, right?” instead of the classic “this is the cruelest and most tyrannical system imaginable.”

In reality, fascism is horrific and unjustifiable, so fascists have to invent terrible consequences (immigrants! you know how many bajillions commies will kill if we don’t murder them now! the Gay Agenda!) that make a fascist regime, however terrible, look “justified” in comparison. 40k has done the same thing, except in-universe those terrible consequences are actually real.

Maybe play the piano

Man I wish I had the time (slash the control of my time) to play D&D again. I was on a 5e campaign and I just couldn’t keep up with it due to work. 3e sounds even better but even more time consuming haha

I’ve seen someone play a build that was always at negative HP, with a limit of something like -300 before dying, and got bonuses for being in the negatives.

Lmao that’s fucking wild

Ha you were conclusively proven wrong and didn’t even blink. A brain so smooth no facts can get stuck on it.