queermunist she/her

At this scale those debts are a chain around their necks that can be used to control them.

As for the aid package, it merely covers half of the debt. On top of that? It’s conditional! Ukraine has to meet certain requirements to receive that aid: energy, border management, agricultural demining, and the development of a list of “strategic and essential” raw materials. Aside from demining that doesn’t sound like defending freedom, that sounds like they are trapping a client state into dependency so they can be exploited for primary production.

This has never been about freedom, I don’t know how anyone could ever believe it was.

Is that why Ukraine is over $100 billion in debt to its Western “allies”?

Putting people into debt slavery is a weird way to defend freedom…

It’s our decision whether we give them billions of dollars of weapons.

Biden and the rest of Europe never gave Ukraine enough support to win either.

This should tell you that the goal of US intervention in Ukraine was never to win.

Liberals don’t want to talk about that. They want to pretend the only problem is Putler having Trump’s pee tapes or something lol

Just to clarify, death to Amerikkka.

I just recognize that the empire is dangerous and understand why weak liberals don’t want to provoke it.

Yes, Russia controls all the world’s governments.

This is a reasonable thing to believe and it’s at all fucking stupid. 👍

Please recommend me a news outlet that isn’t propaganda. CNN? MSNBC? Fox? lol

Yeah, look at how we all read the threads posted to our instance.

🙄

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Driving is simultaneously the most boring and most dangerous thing people do day-to-day. They want the driving to stop as soon as possible, so they speed. They don’t want to be stuck with their own thoughts for even a single second, so they text.

And there’s no choice. It’s not like they can get anywhere without a car in this shithole country.

Yes, the US is a stupid country full of stupid people.

But, there’s a reason Europe is bending the knee. As stupid and self destructive as the US is, it can still wreck their economy.

Okay, I’m explaining my opinion. Whatever. I’m trying to root my opinion in the material reality of Europe’s dependency on the US (energy, finance, military) because I think that actually neatly explains why Europe constantly bends over backwards for Trump. Again, it’s not just fossil fuels. It’s NATO, it’s global trade in dollars, etc etc. Dependency is multifaceted.

I can’t help but notice you didn’t explain your opinion on why Europe obeys the US’s demands. Do you have an explanation?

A sudden 20% drop would be catastrophic. Europe could possibly thread the needle but things would be hard for a while, at least causing a multiple year recession.

I’m just explaining to you the material reasons for why Europe bends the knee to the US. What’s your explanation? They’re just dummies?

The US would just wait for the EU to collapse, because even a single winter without US imports would destroy them. The UK couldn’t ramp up production that quickly, they’ve been declining as producers for a long time. There’d be at least a few years when people can’t heat their homes or run factories because they’re cut off from the US and Russia at the same time.

Trump also seems fully willing to destroy the US just to teach his enemies a lesson lol

Besides, just drilling for more fossil fuels is going to kill us all. Electrification is the only serious solution.

Europe is essentially a collection of neocolonies of the US empire. As Europe’s colonies gained independence and as NATO constantly increased demands for US military hardware and as fossil fuels became dominated by trade in dollars and as the Eurozone robbed them of currency sovereignty, they became stuck in a state of dependency on the US and USD. The amount of leverage Trump has to punish Europe is actually massive, tariffs are the tip of the iceberg.

How does a winter without imported US gas sound? You can’t get it from Russia anymore, after all.

The only hope I see for Europe is if they pivot to Asia, especially China. The only alternative is to get off of imported US natural gas and oil traded in dollars by switching to Chinese solar and electric vehicles, embrace electrification. The Netherlands backing down on stealing that Chinese chip factory gives me some hope that Europe isn’t going to alienate itself from China too.

Force employers to pay transportation costs and you’ll see commute lengths plummet.

There would certainly be consequences if they stood up to the US.

It’s the only thing I see him doing. I don’t see him organizing workers or tenants and helping them unionize. I don’t see him distributing mutual aid. I don’t see him engaged in mass education. I don’t see him arming the poor and training a people’s army.

The electoral part is the only part I see him doing, and the only part I see his supporters doing.

Again, I’d be happy to see him prove me wrong.

On the one hand I’m farther to his left and am critical of some of his campaign decisions, and am not optimistic about his abilities to overcome the capitalists through purely electoral means.

On the other hand I’d be happy to see him prove me wrong.