Lmao you not only think Russia is committing genocide, but you think they came right out and said their intent is to commit genocide?

Fucking delusional

Cool, now your brother is dead and you lost half your property. Your serial killer gun nut buddy doesn’t give a damn about you so he didn’t show up to fight himself, but now he holds the mortgage to your house because he lent you weapons to fight and lose.

Was it worth it?

Damn, Blowback is already doing viral marketing for Season 17?

If the U.S. actually gave a shit about women’s rights it wouldn’t ally with Saudi Arabia (and a dozen other countries) and wouldn’t have funded and armed fundamentalist Muslims throughout the 70s and 80s.

The U.S. view of human rights generally is that they are occasionally a useful rhetorical cudgel for browbeating skeptical liberals into supporting the war du jour.

“Threatening to end the human race is good, actually”

Note the seamless transition to this, when “I think Russia does what the U.S. actually does” is shown to be false

Lmao go back to reddit you debatelord loser

Fascism is when you respond to a pandemic

But they used Ctrl + F

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases

Due to the sensitive and often classified nature of this information, there is no comprehensive list with the exact number or location of all bases, stations and installations. The total number of foreign sites with installations and facilities that are either in active use and service, or that may be activated and operated by American military personnel and allies, is just over 1,000.

The U.S. is the only country on the planet that has a first-strike policy, i.e., that as a standing matter threatens to use nukes. This is not 80 years ago, this is right now.

“If you invite your serial killer gun nut friend to build a tree stand on your property pointed at my house, we’re going to have problems”

The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

At least he had some good jokes to warm up the crowd!

I think I’ve told you before that I know it’s hard to allocate money for defence, because most politicians want to spend money on health, on education, on infrastructure instead of defence.

“Why do people want to talk about stuff that affects their daily lives so damn much???”

Ahh. Here’s a good start:

The country’s ultranationalist groups came to the fore in 2014, when they kickstarted massive street protests that led to the ousting of the Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych…

Torch-bearing ultra-right activists regularly march to the beat of drums across the Ukrainian capital’s downtown, chanting, “Death to traitors of Ukraine!” During one scuffle at the memorial to a Red Army general killed in the second world war, an elderly woman approached a group of radical nationalists shouting, “Hang the Russians!” and defied them, saying: “I’m Russian, hang me!”…

In a series of violent actions that underline their strength, rightwing radicals in recent years have assaulted gatherings by LGBT and women’s rights activists, attacked Roma encampments around the country, derailed a lecture on the history of the Holocaust and brawled with pro-Russia veterans…

Yermolayev said in the past the government turned a blind eye to the rise of nationalist groups, using them as a scare tactic, but now the ultra-right has turned on the authorities. “The well-organised and aggressive nationalism in Ukraine is a child of the government. It has lost control over radical nationalists. [Petro] Poroshenko has lost that game.”…

International human rights groups have strongly criticised the Ukrainian government for failing to track down and punish those responsible for the acts of violence and intimidation. The government has promised to rein in the ultranationalists, but has taken no action…

That’s a pretty good overview of the character of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, as well as some on the scale of the problem. It mentions they sent “volunteer battalions” to the separatist regions, but does not have tons of detail on what they were doing there. This one has more detail on that:

“I have nothing against Russian nationalists, or a great Russia,” said Dmitry, as we sped through the dark Mariupol night in a pickup truck, a machine gunner positioned in the back. “But Putin’s not even a Russian. Putin’s a Jew.”

Dmitry – which he said is not his real name – is a native of east Ukraine and a member of the Azov battalion, a volunteer grouping that has been doing much of the frontline fighting in Ukraine’s war with pro-Russia separatists. The Azov, one of many volunteer brigades to fight alongside the Ukrainian army in the east of the country, has developed a reputation for fearlessness in battle…

In this next section, note how the neo-Nazis are declaring they’ll do whatever they want, and see themselves as held back by the actual military:

For the commanders and the generals in Kiev, who many in Azov and other volunteer battalions see as responsible for the awful losses the Ukrainian army has suffered in recent weeks, especially in the ill-fated retreat from Ilovaysk, there was only contempt. “Generals like those in charge of Ilovaysk should be imprisoned for treason,” said Skillt. “Heads are going to roll for sure, I think there will be a battle for power.”

The Ukrainian armed forces are “an army of lions led by a sheep”, said Dmitry, and there is only so long that dynamic can continue. With so many armed, battle-hardened and angry young men coming back from the front, there is a danger that the rolling of heads could be more than a metaphor.

And of course:

This week, Amnesty International called on the Ukrainian government to investigate rights abuses and possible executions by the Aidar, another battalion.

"The failure to stop abuses and possible war crimes by volunteer battalions risks significantly aggravating tensions in the east of the country and undermining the proclaimed intentions of the new Ukrainian authorities to strengthen and uphold the rule of law more broadly," said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International secretary general, in Kiev.

On what, in particular?

nothing in the treaty forbade it.

“I’m not legally prohibited from doing this” is rarely a good argument

They are, but while wicked problems (what Bostonians call “math”) are very difficult to resolve to the satisfaction of everyone, some approaches are far worse than others.

Ukraine’s approach – failing to control the neo-Nazi paramilitaries in their midst, then allowing those paramilitaries to violate the Minsk agreements while running away from your largest neighbor and in to the arms of the U.S. empire, then skipping offramps in the lead up to the war and in its first months – was a particularly bad one.

I understand you didn’t say that. What I meant was, had Japan been trying to liberate Hawaii and the U.S. reacted by trying to maintain control, I would see that as U.S. imperialism. But that wasn’t the case – it was more like Napoleonic France launching an attack on British India and Britain invading France as a response. Both are imperial powers, sure, but one metropole attacking another in response to its colony being attacked is really stretching the definition of imperialism. And it helps to have somewhat restricted uses of terms like imperialism so they don’t just become meaningless (see libs calling everything done by any Bad Country “genocide”).

Never believe that [fascists] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The [fascists] have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.