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Machiavelli

New Member
Registered Member
No they haven’t, at least the Dutch and French have not. They want to be able to bully China with their knockoff version of Plaza Accord while China backs them up against MAGA bullying. It’s your typical alpha bitch friend zone tactic. Unfortunately for them, the Chinese are no chair enthusiasts and will extract his pound of flesh before the whole thing concludes.
France= overcapacity card; Dutch=ASML restrictions are just one example.
 

pmc

Colonel
Registered Member
Russia may be corrupt but I think Ukraine is at least as corrupt. And it was way poorer even before the war. Now of course Russia has massive oil/gas reserves which Ukraine lacks but there are plenty of resource-rich basket cases in the Third World. So it's fair to say that Putin did a better job than his counterparts in Ukraine (not a very high bar, admittedly, plus Yeltsin made a massive mess).

I also don't think that talk of Ukraine joining the EU in 2027 is very realistic. My interpretation is that the EU uses this language in order to "keep morale up". It's possible Ukraine will be given more liberal entry rules than other candidate states such as Turkey or Serbia, but the real test is when the war ends.

That said, I have little patience for apologetics of Russia's behaviour. Russia basically engaged in a diplomatic turfwar with the West over who could pull Ukraine to its side. Russia lost because it's a much weaker power economically and diplomatically, so it used the only card it had left to play: military. It has done much better than many Western analysts thought, but it has severely underperformed the expectations of "Russia shills" like Douglas McGregor or Scott Ritter's endless prediction of massive Russian offensives and imminent takeovers of major Ukrainian cities like Dnipro, Kharkiv, Odessa etc.

I don't think the West is very innocent here either. I basically think Western capitals were just as cynical as the Russians were. But my view is that if you actually defend the Russian propaganda line about how "NATO expansion forced our hand" then you also have to accept that the US was right to threaten nuclear war over USSR missiles in Cuba during the Cold War. But people are rarely principled. Instead they just cheer for "their team" and make up excuses as they go along.

Either way, Russia has now fought Ukraine for longer than they fought Nazi Germany during WW2(!) and they still haven't conquered the Donbass. It's pretty miserable no matter how you look at it. That's why I cannot take these NATO statements about Putin invading the EU seriously. It's a shadow of its former self.
Ukraine has become expensive parasite that is making Europe poor. Zelensky can speak against every one except those who is enabling this prolong conflict.
It is in Europe own interest that it does not become poor and deindustrialized because in that case Europe usefulness for Kingdoms will decrease and Russia will have much freerer hand.
A Tourist code being created for Crimea but it does not mean that hidden systems are not already in place like observing this Eiffel Tower replica.
now think about how many Values and weopons Russia is testing in Ukraine that is prolonging the conflict. only country with Real GDP can afford such an approach.
 

siegecrossbow

Field Marshall
Staff member
Super Moderator
There is so many new ways to gamble in the 2nd fastest growing industry of America.

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Fallout: New Vegas at home is very disappointing. Instead of cool factions, awesome retro futuristic tech, and intimidating villains with realistic motivations the best we can do are shit coins, online gambling, outsourcing of jobs, and a gerontocracy of cannibalistic pedos who make the average comic book movie villains look 3 dimensional.
 

supercat

Colonel
The US regime just kidnapped the president of a sovereign country last month. The hypocrisy of Western MSM such as the WSJ stinks to high heaven.

Coping tweet of the day:

False equivalency of the day: Greece in 2008 = China in 2026.
 
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