No kidding. Today it’s a power play by us but the long term consequences may be a diversification out of the US banking system and out of dollars.
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Correct.
US+Western Europe have been on the same side since WW2.
Now a new big behemoth(economically+militarily) has risen which is not on that side with the Western Powers and that country’s economy is only predicted to grow bigger going forward.
All other countries not in these groups are also watching and analyzing .
The weaponization of electronic banking is really scary. This right after Trudeau froze the accounts of individuals who DONATED to the truckers who were protesting…
I think I’m going to be stockpiling cash soon.
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.
Make sure in various currency.
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Good point!
This Quora post from almost a year ago talks about the cultural problem I mentioned earlier:
I used to think that every culture is more or less on an equal footing. After all everyone has access to more or less the same information. Now I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Some cultures are just more advanced than others. Take Afghanistan. We tried for 20 years to put in some form of democracy there. But at the first sight of trouble their president fled without a fight and the whole thing just collapsed. Afghanistan isn’t even ready for a secular government. It’s still mostly a tribal society steeped in religious fundamentalism. It’s not ready for democracy. It may never will.
Russia is another case. 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union it’s still very much the same old corrupt society worshipping strongmen and reminiscing the glorious old imperial days.
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This thread has missed my point. Whether or not you believe the all the news, Ukrainians are not the only victims. The Russians themselves are going suffer greatly from Putin’s tyranny. I remember how much American suffered from our misadventures like Vietnam. Russia will never be the same. They have swept past atrocities like in Syria under the rug. This won’t happen with this Ukrainian disaster. Too many Russians have Ukrainian relatives that will make sure the truth comes out. Not too mention the fact of the returning troops destabilizing civil society.
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That’s the whole point of the sanctions - make the people suffer so that they try to remove Putin. Really it’d have to be one of his staff though.
Suffering doesn’t break down Russian’s resolve. It steels it up.
When the price increases in commodities like wheat start to hit the US we’ll be suffering too - only we aren’t used to it.
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Yes we should back off and reason with Putin. That will work. I’m glad we are being aggressive and baffled by the Republican sentiment that we are being too tough.
Fact is Russian money has been flooding our politicians and airwaves. People like Tucker, Marjorie, Tucker are bought and paid for. I always say there are good Republicans and Democrats and reasonable people can disagree on the issues. But this polarization that is destroying our country has been fed by Putin and it’s important that if we can have him removed we do.
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Um, who has said we are being too tough?
The Russians have been terrorizing their neighbors for centuries. Anyone who doesn’t believe the American news about atrocities is naïve.
We have satellite images matching images recorded by Ukrainian army drones, showing bodies strewn around, videos and stills are emerging all over, displaying their brutality, witnesses come thick and fast, essentially every survivor is a witness. There are rape victims making it to hospitals, girls under 10 with recto-vaginal tears. All that is being documented.
From Quora
I was personally told this more than 2 weeks ago. A Ukrainian person, residing north of Kyiv, told me this was happening, that he saw it with his own eyes, and that he was lucky to have escaped. At the time I dismissed it as either an exaggeration or a one-off. Come april, his story was proven right. One of the pictures of dead bodies, that has circulated around the world, I know a guy who saw the murders with his own eyes.
No way in hell would I admit a 1% chance they are not guilty. They are guilty. I even believe they were ordered to commit those crimes, from murders not rapes. And the command came from Kremlin.
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OK… I’ve been pouring over photos. I’m going to declare these three as fake - all taken in the same location. Everything else I’m finding on the web seems believable. I don’t know who took these photos (clearly the same location, different angles), but the bodies are not decomposed, no blood, the bodies look like they laid down, and everything looks staged.
Most of the rest of the photos I’ve seen have a ton of destruction, bodies that are in odd positions, some are decomposed/clothes are flattened, blood spattered, and the clothes are covered with dirt and debris. Bodies laid on top of each other. The rest is believable, but I’m going to call these particular ones fakes.
Putin needs to put his finance minister in charge of the his military.
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Written by my friend and neighbor Leon Malmed. He survived WW2 hidden in neighbors attic. Like Ann Frank
I was 3 ½ when the Luftwaffe , German air force, bombed of our town, Compiegne, 45 miles north of Paris in 1940.
Hitler ordered the killing of innocent civilians, destroyed close to 30,000 houses and buildings. Why?
Hitler was taking revenge for WWI Germany’s defeat.
WWI‘s Armistice was signed in a railroad car near our town on November 11, 1918!!!
Today, Putin is destroying Ukraine to revenge the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and to fulfill his goal: be Europe’s dictator.
He is accusing the Ukrainian government to be Nazis.
This is as ridiculous as accusing Hitler of having been a Zionist!
Putin is reenacting Hitler’s WWII murderous plan.
He has read Mein Kampf.
He is using Hitler’s script to invade Europe.
Putin is a ruthless, tyrannical dictator.
I was 4 1/2 when my parents were taken to Auschwitz where they were murdered.
To this day, I am asking the questions that has haunted me all my life: why did the World outside of Europe let Hitler proceed until it was too late?
Looking at the American history period of the late 30s, the US State department and several influencers were STRONGLY pro-Nazi. They did not want the US to meddle in European disputes. They admired Hitler’s positioning of invincibility.
They, also, thought that he was a genius.
So, America declared war on Germany December 7, 1941 when Europe was totally occupied and well protected against an invasion.
The delay in entering the war costs the death of 291,557 US soldiers along with 672,000 who came home wounded.
President Roosevelt stayed out of Hitler’s way because of the US political climate.
If the US had even threatened to enter the war in 1939, could WWII have been avoided?
Beyond economic sanctions, Putin faced little consequence for this 2014 power play, and his geopolitical machinations surged. Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Donald Trump’s subsequent derision of NATO probably convinced Putin of his ability to extend Russia’s global sway without substantial obstacles.
Over the past several years, as Putin has increasingly constricted Russian civil society, limited his country’s independent media and news sources, and imprisoned domestic opposition leaders, he has enhanced his ability to pursue his aims unencumbered. Reviving the imperialist dreams of his czarist forebears, Putin moved to reclaim the empire that he believes was unjustly pilfered from Russia.
Sent from my iPhone
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Our own and FBI and CIA have done far more to interfere in our elections than Russia’s petty games on social media.
Trump not only increased sanctions against Putin but had it not been for his insistence that NATO members start paying their fair share NATO would be in an even weaker position today.
Actually I rather doubt the Ukraine invasion would have happened at all if Trump was still president. He certainly wouldn’t have help bankroll it by reducing US energy production.
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You talking about the guy who withheld aid to Ukraine unless they gave him dirt on his political opponent? The guy who got impeached because of that?
Impeached but not convicted.
Because there was no evidence. Even the Ukrainians denied it.
The Obama administration, on the other hand, did blackmail Ukraine into firing a prosecutor. Biden even boasted about it.