Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
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Saelune, IIRC, was just very touchy about transphobia and threats against trans people (understandably), and was posting during the first Trump administration.
- Apr 1, 2009
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No, not really, we saw with tim pool that russia is very willing to just give money to people to shit on the US. Doesn't have to be good propaganda, just has to sew confusion, they are more then willing to let that happen.
I don't think that's the case here. Seanchaidh is so rabidly anti-capitalist and pro-"worker's revolution" that he believes that a resurgent Russia will magically transform back into the USSR and be a socialist beacon to the world, inspiring workers everywhere to rise up and kill their bosses. He has willingly blinded himself to Putin's oligarchal actions and willingness to use capitalism to his own ends.
"Trump 1" could be viewed as a rogue president who did not necessarily represent the views of his country. The election and current rampage of Trump 2 suggests the USA has no further interest in NATO.
But Europe certainly did not heed the warnings of Trump 1. Well, unless you count the piles of strategic reviews they've written, but they're really a way of avoiding doing anything. Reminds me of an old friend: he was a hopeless strategy game player because he always wanted to get that next tech tree advance for better guns/armour before he raised his army, with the result he always ended up getting invaded whilst having no army. We kept having to rescue him in co-op Starcraft because he'd have wasted his resources turtling and researching and not have enough left to exploit new resource sites.
It's not even that.
It's just blind hatred for capitalism / USA / West that has ultimately screwed his internal sense of morality. I might not entirely agree with how CM156 put it in terms of code of conduct, but the rest seems basically sound.
It's very similar to the late journalist John Pilger. He did lots uncovering war crimes, injustice and crimes against humanity until the 1990s, when something seemed to break and he ended up denying, downplaying and trivialising the massacres committed by the Serbs, because I just don't think it would compute in his mind that the West he despised might be preventing massacres. From that point on, he was a thoroughly reliable defender of any tyrant, totalitarian or mass murderer so long as they opposed the West. Maybe, as Nietzsche said, they gazed too deep into the abyss and it gazed back at them, left them blind to their own moral compromise and hypocrisy.
This is even without the irony that I don't think the "workers" give a fucking stuff about Sean and his ilk anyway. Those sorts of progressives have a genuinely appalling record at actually picking up the working class's votes. I think they're actually a brand of educated, middle class radicals (more in common with the Baader Meinhof gang or Al Qaida) as far from the proletariat as any political elites and liberals they despise.
I mostly agree that in Trump 1 there was room to view Trump as a rogue president due to the population having voted against him, and having to get forced on to an unwilling population through the electoral college. With Trump winning the electoral vote this is now no longer the case.
And while the words ''eratic, vile and treasonous'' would sum up my current view of the US I'm willing to give the population some benefit of the doubt that they don't share Trump's psychotic desire to betray Europe and do it harm. They do however seem to be fine with it which is only marginally better.
Honestly, Trumps demand that the Europeans increase military spending during the first term made it pretty hard for politicians to actually do so because no one wanted to be seen as giving in to Trump.
Trumps first term was also a time with renewed focus on domestic military projects to avoid having to buy American in the future.
But people mostly just did not believe that Putin would actually start a full blown war.
But they did in fact increase their defense spending. I believe Italy or Spain's a bit of an outlier but most countries now meet the 2% Nato norm. Though more due to Putin actually starting a war on the European continent then anything Trump was saying.
But its interesting what happened when Europe mostly met the 2% norm. Or rather what didn't happen. Trump didn't change his behavior or talking point one bit, and in fact even became more aggressive and hostile.The only thing he had to say about Europe meeting the norm he allegedly considered so gosh darn important was ''Its still not enough. Go do 5%''. And once Europe does 5% he'll likely insist they do 10%. Because it was never about what Europe was or wasn't paying. Trump just needed the pretext to ''justify'' his bad treatment.
I think many, if not most, american don't think about europe other than a vacation spot, and are probably only vaguely aware that they're country with their own government. It always bear remembering that the average american is shockingly ignorant about almost everything even remotely connected to politic. Like here's a poll with very basic questions about NATO and only about a third of the population could answer correctly (3 questions).
2. Americans’ opinions of NATO
U.S. ratings of NATO have dipped a bit, particularly among Republicans. And 66% say NATO membership benefits the U.S., down slightly since 2022.
www.pewresearch.org
The view of American, under Trump or Biden, is just ignorance. Its also the same for just about everything, iirc the average american think the US spent about a third of its budget on foreign aid, when its less than 1%.
I know having a test before election has a very dark history, but I think some sort of simple quiz, asking basic, factual answer, with the answer widely distributed, should really be explored. Maybe have some sort of weighting based on how many questions the person answer correctly?
So Trumps treasury secretary went to the Ukrine to sign a rare earth deal.
https://www.euronews.com/2025/02/16/ukraines-president-rejects-deal-with-us-over-rare-minerals
turns out that deal was "The US now owns 50% of all Ukrainian deposits and this is a repayment for the aid the US provided in the past. Also there will still be no future aid, troops or guarantee, so the Ukraine gets nothing. Except that maybe the US will in the future see the need to defend her mines."
Zelenskyy rightfully blasted this as colonial and obviously didn't sign.
https://www.euronews.com/2025/02/16/ukraines-president-rejects-deal-with-us-over-rare-minerals
turns out that deal was "The US now owns 50% of all Ukrainian deposits and this is a repayment for the aid the US provided in the past. Also there will still be no future aid, troops or guarantee, so the Ukraine gets nothing. Except that maybe the US will in the future see the need to defend her mines."
Zelenskyy rightfully blasted this as colonial and obviously didn't sign.
This is a fair point. He did the same with Mexico and Canada over trade, too. Once anyone meets his target, he'll just set a new one and start the extortion afresh. I say this, however, with the recognition that at least with the 2% defence spending Trump had something of a point. European countries had been dragging their heels on that for a long time.
And I think it is extortion: he has the mentality of a mob boss. All it really comes down to is how much Trump can screw out of someone, with the possibility that he might accept sufficient flattery instead of money. Given the power of the USA, he's decided to just extort the world.
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I read somewhere that Peru has built a new super-port at Chancay. In some ways this starkly encapsulates much of what's going on in the world.
This is the sort of development project developing countries hunger for. Peru wanted this port; but where it originally just wanted someone to help build it, China has supplied the money and ended up owning it, too. The USA wouldn't help them, and looked on and did nothing. Thus it is that China builds influence across the globe.
Now Trump has taken power and threatens every country that will use Chancay with 60% tariffs. In the short term, this sort of thing might scare countries into compliance because the USA is still so important, but more likely in the long-term will give the USA the reputation of an unreliable partner that they need to future proof themselves against by forming closer alliances with everyone else.
I have not found the details on this, I don't know if the information I want is publicly available at all, but there's a difference between "we own half the minerals", and "we are entitled to buy half the minerals from you on favorable terms", and my suspicion is the offer was the latter.
No, actually it was "we own half the minerals". Which is a reason prople very soon pointed out that such a deal would not be constitutional in the Ukraine anyway.
Do you have the text in front of you to validate that?
Last time Trump was president, he made an executive order that Jewish is a protected class and attacking Jewishness is a hate crime, whether the hate be against the religion, ethnicity, or national origin of the person being attacked, ironing out any loopholes in complex the venn diagram of jewishness. The New York Times (I believe, might have been a different outlet) got a leaked draft of this order, and reported it as Trump drafting an executive order saying Jews aren't American anymore. I'm not taking second or third hand accounts as truth, I want the actual text to judge for myself.
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Trump has stated that he thinks Ukraine owes the USA compensation for aid already given, and to pay for any further US assistance. On balance this seems to suggest demanding payments/assets, not just advantages for US companies seeking economic opportunities. Plus the explicit reference to legal problems in terms of ownership of Ukrainian resources seems odd were it not relevant.
This very much supports the notion that the USA was demanding to own (directly, or indirectly via US companies) Ukrainian resources. Although there is a source that says that the mechanism whereby tthe USA planned to get 50% of the minerals was complex, so there could be a lot of devil in the detail.
Finally, we can consider the clarity and strength Ukrainian response, which would suggest that Ukraine viewed it as an extremely poor deal for them.
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Of course, this was also potentially part of the play: Trump announces he's going to sell out Ukraine to Putin, and then hopefully having scared the shit out of Ukraine, offers it the mother of all shittily exploitative deals.
I do not dispute this. I'm sure that regardless of the details, the terms were very favorable tot the US. But the reports of it being "sign this to give us half your resources, and you get nothing more in return" seem, at minimum, exaggerated, and I would like to know the actual terms.
Yes, me too. But I think we have to suspect it's substantially more than conventional sorts of economic exploitation rights, e.g. preferential access.
Doesn't really matter which of the two it is. The USA has no right to such deal after turning traitor.