Politics Thread!

[F-ZeroOne]

Note which country Trump put first when signing off one of his announcements about the forthcoming "immediate" peace negotiations:

"God bless Russia and Ukraine!"

[F-ZeroOne]

And Kennedy is Health Secretary, so there will be no need for any conspiracy theories as to where the next pandemic originated from please.

[KlaxonCow]

"Red, White and Blue" Land.

Nice of them to name it after the French, the Russian Federation, the British, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Norway, Iceland, Cuba, Serbia, Chile...

Do the Americans realise how many other flags are "red, white and blue"?

You're really not narrowing this down at all.

[F-ZeroOne]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceve3wl21x1o

So, do Craigslist have a "Looking for New Allies" page or...?

[PFVA]

Allow me to moan.
The quake of a couple days ago brought down a bit to a cliff in a beach about 50Km fm here.
No one got hurt, there was no damage to property but it's very close to the buildings on top of the cliff. The people fm those condominiums were on TV yesterday with the usual demands that the government has to do something.
I started fuming.
Why are they building on top of cliffs, actually sandy cliffs, not solid rock ones. And worse large buildings those popping up near beaches that look like drawers.
Where have this people been all this time that they never heard that the sea is rising, the storms are being more intense. Why are they building less than 500m of the water line when they should know it's not safe. And they don't know this area is known for earthquakes, including two historic ones in 1500s and in the 1750s.
And now they want the government, that's the taxpayers to go solve their problem?
And these aren't poor people. That is an expensive area per national standards.
Ow, fm all names possible the area is named Praia da California, California Beach, named after a place where the cliffs are also falling even though they have a lot more money and a much stronger economy.

[F-ZeroOne]

Trump says what he really thinks about Ukraine out loud:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c62e2158mkpt

At least they're still incredibly bad at lawyering, not that it matters as the Supreme Court like their masters belly rubs as much as the Orange One does:

https://www.wonkette.com/p/president-bo ... s-military

[KlaxonCow]

[KlaxonCow]

So here's how Putin is playing MAGA like fiddles:



Create a website called "DC Weekly", even though it's being run out of Moscow.
Invent bullshit that Zelenskyy is siphoning off American funding to buy two luxury yachts for himself.
MAGA conspiracy theorists swallow it wholesale and Trump's stooges parrot the lies in Congress and "Truth Social".
Republicans pause American aid to Ukraine.
Trump goes to "peace talks" and capitulates everything to Putin, like a cowardly idiot.

Not a word of it was ever true.

[zip accident]

So here's how Putin is playing MAGA like fiddles:



Create a website called "DC Weekly", even though it's being run out of Moscow.
Invent bullshit that Zelenskyy is siphoning off American funding to buy two luxury yachts for himself.
MAGA conspiracy theorists swallow it wholesale and Trump's stooges parrot the lies in Congress and "Truth Social".
Republicans pause American aid to Ukraine.
Trump goes to "peace talks" and capitulates everything to Putin, like a cowardly idiot.

Not a word of it was ever true.

I still want to know what Trump is getting in return. Putin gets Ukraine, Trump gets an arctic wasteland? That won't pay off in Trump's lifetime. So maybe The Gulf of America, the whole rich man's paradise known as The Caribbean is the payback he's aiming for? Jamaica, Cuba, The Dominican Republic and a host of smaller islands. that's a lot of money, particularly all the tax havens.

[PFVA]

An ally against China?
US + Europe alone cannot face China.
US + Europe + Russia make it possible, specially if they convince Europe to get its own defence systems rather than relying on the US and NATO.

[zip accident]

An ally against China?
US + Europe alone cannot face China.
US + Europe + Russia make it possible, specially if they convince Europe to get its own defence systems rather than relying on the US and NATO.

That may be what the USA gets, but Trump will want personal profits.

The amount of money he could make from investing in the annexed Caribbean would be collosal. Mind you, I'm probably over cynical.

Europe is probably more inclined to worry about the Bear on the doorstep than the Panda an ocean away, whereas for the USA it's the Panda on the doorstep and the bear an ocean away.

[PFVA]

That may be what the USA gets, but Trump will want personal profits.

That's very possible. He seems to be a big supporter of the "trickle down" economics, and in his case colateral damage is to be ignored, such as moving the Palestinians out of Palestine to give way to multi-million investments that will make the other rich.

Keeping my fingers crossed for Germany. I hope the Christian-Democrats, the Social Democrats, and the Greens can keep the country out of dangerous extreme policies.

I do agree that there is too many immigrants and the countries cannot absorb everybody the way it is BUT the big powers need to stop messing up other countries. What do they think it will happen if they move the Palestinians out of their homeland to Egypt? Lots of them be jumping in ship to cross to Europe looking for better and more peaceful conditions. People like Trump are creating those problems in first place.

[KlaxonCow]

An ally against China?
US + Europe alone cannot face China.
US + Europe + Russia make it possible, specially if they convince Europe to get its own defence systems rather than relying on the US and NATO.

Besides Taiwan, which they view as part of China already, as it was where those who opposed the Communist revolution went and established themselves, is China an expansionist imperial power like that?

Trump and Putin want to gobble up other countries, but China has never really even hinted at wanting to annex the planet one country at a time. It has disputes over its immediate borders here and there, but there's been no hint that it wants to annex Kazakhstan or anything like that.

Emperor Qin's Great Wall has a tendency to not only keep people out of China, but to keep China in. Because it neatly defines what is China and what isn't.

And these are Communists. Communism tends to spread by revolution, not imperial conquest. It waits there as being "the answer" to the tyranny of "Robber Barons" - like Trump and Putin - offering a "People's Republic". Communism presents itself as "the solution" to imperialism.

There was a reason why Europe has been standing down its armies for a while. Because until Putin got belligerent and invaded Crimea and Ukraine, the world had generally come to the consensus that this wasn't how things worked anymore. Large conquering armies were not required anymore because "the age of conquest" had come to a close and everyone had switched to trade and "conquest by cultural export".

And, to be honest, China has been fine with "conquest by trade" because it's been winning that one hands down. We handed over nearly all manufacturing to them. They're in zero hurry to change that because they're winning, and soon to overtake America as the richest of them all.

This whole "US + Russia + Europe" calculation is based on military might. But is China a military enemy in that way?

Or, put another way, Putin wants military conquest because that's the only way his country wins this game. Russia's only influence is oil and gas, but those are in short supply (oil has less than 40 years left to exist) and are / should be phased out soon. But, at the rate things are going, China inevitably wins the economic game anyway. It need take no action but carrying on and the projections are an inevitability.

Indeed, the American right are belligerent and "America first", exactly because they can see that "we're #1" is inevitably going to be ceded to China, unless they grab manufacturing and such back home. That's very openly what's motivating Trump's rather insane policies.

[Harlequin]

Trump and Putin want to gobble up other countries, but China has never really even hinted at wanting to annex the planet one country at a time. It has disputes over its immediate borders here and there, but there's been no hint that it wants to annex Kazakhstan or anything like that.
…
And these are Communists. Communism tends to spread by revolution, not imperial conquest.…

I suspect quite a few Tibetans might question that view.

[F-ZeroOne]

https://www.wonkette.com/p/georgia-cong ... ped-gop-fk

Just your average daily reminder that you don't always get to choose who "Them" are.