Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Since he has already made not wearing a suit his "thing", it would have also been a signal for him to wear a suit. It would have probably signified a humiliation and subjection, a kowtow to the new Emperor.
I'm thinking of another leader who made disrespecting sartorial codes his "thing", the Greek PM Tsipras during the euro crisis, who made a point of not wearing a tie until there was a debt deal. Of course, when the debt deal was made, it was basically the same old austerity he had been elected to end, and when he wore a tie it was obviously an indication of submission (though the actual submission had been made far earlier).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Winter War, I don't think it continued to the Continuation War.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
I've never considered direct Russian influence to European electoral politics to be as meaningful as claimed by many, though there have been clear attempts by the RF to do so.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
And, of course, there was a lot of open and hidden American electoral interference to European electoral politics during the Cold War. A lot of political forces in Europe basically ran entirely or mostly on American cash.
Sweden and Finland implicitly (often stated explicitly, even) work together as a team. Finland provides the land force, Sweden provides the navy and the air force.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
If this was a Finnish forum you could probably start a flamewar lasting hundreds of posts on the topic of "the degree of Finnish participation in the siege of Leningrad".
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
and was not helped during the war by any foreign country in any way
Well, not quite true...
There's a longstanding historical debate on whether the possibility of Anglo-French intervention in Winter War was the decisive factor in Soviets deciding to acquiesce to peace, but that debate is beyond my pay grade, insofar as giving a definite answer goes.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
I think that the best way to see it is like: Trump likes tariffs. In the ideal Trumpworld, there's basically a high tariff against most every country, with lower and nonexistent tariff rates being a special favor for pliant loyalists, not the basic starting point. He can't implement this right now in its entirety, since it would still be bit too harsh a hit on economy, but he can start implementing it against those whose negotiating position isn't particularly good, ie. weaker neighboring countries much more dependent on US than US is on them.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
More to the point, why would Russia ally with a country that has indicated willingness to do 180-degree turns in foreign policy and abandon previous allies at will due to local power shifts?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
My image, as someone who had followed Ukrainian politics close enough to not have a particularly positive image of Zelensky before the invasion, is that when he was woken up and told that the Russians had started a full-scale invasion instead of a more limited op that they had probably been expecting, he probably freaked out a bit and then finally went "Ahh, shit, I have to 100 % commit to an image of a great wartime leader now, don't I?" and then did exactly that. Since he's an actor he found this relatively easy, and obviously when you act as something long enough there's less and less difference to being one, though it still doesn't make him a master tactician when he's committed to some military course of action instead of what the generals are suggesting.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Starmer and the others have been quite clear that any potential coalition of the willing sending troops would send the troops to be a tripwire after a cease-fire. I don't think anyone is really expecting, in the current situation for Article 5 to result to US intervention if Europe was to send troops right now, int he middle of war.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
If Kolomoyskyi has an outsized influence in Ukraine, why did this happen?
In 2020, he was indicted in the United States on charges related to large-scale bank fraud. In 2021, the U.S. banned Kolomoyskyi and his family from entering the country, accusing him of corruption and being a threat to the Ukrainian public's faith in democratic institutions. Zelenskyy reportedly stripped Kolomoyskyi of his Ukrainian citizenship in 2022. Later that same year, those of Kolomoyskyi's assets deemed to be of strategic value to the state in light of the Russian invasion were nationalised. These included Ukraine's largest gasoline companies. In 2023, Kolomoyskyi was arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on charges of money laundering and fraud, and placed under pre-trial arrest.
This is literally the third paragraph of the Wikipedia Kolomoyskyi page where your other quotes are from - don't you think it's more than a bit mendacious to not include this detail when discussing Kolomoyskyi's supposed influence?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Do you generally believe that "an invading, occupying army commits atrocities" is by definition so improbable that it warrants a basic assumption that such claims are propaganda?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
No one in Europe is massively raising defense spending, activating the draft, getting nuclear weapons, or calling for a pan-Europian army.
Many countries in Europe have, in fact, hiked up defense spending massively, not only compared to 2021 but also compared to 2014, in other words the boost started already after Crimea. At least most of the EU countries in the chart now have defence spending that surpasses the 2% NATO guideline. Numerous politicians have called for a pan-European army throughout the years.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Stan was presented as a voice of reason in the South Park Goobacks episode.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Okay, this may be a stupid question, but wouldn't the simplest solution be announcing that the Administrator of DOGE is... Donald Trump? Is there something preventing the President from also holding other administratorial posts?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
How many others just saw this post in the comments feed and went "Wait, why would Neil Gaiman be moderating Warren Ellis fan forums?" before clicking it?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Yes, especially within the context of the book, the chapter is indeed an act of self-flagellation over having held views of the described sort in his youth. I'm not sure what sort of a further retraction than what was described you're looking for here.
This really sounds like nitpicking and goalpost moving, setting up specific standards on the spot that he apparently should have passed for it to be a real retraction.
Kendi's clear message in this chapter is that his youthful views are bad and it's bad to hold views like this. He could have very well chosen not to include a chapter on the book on why anti-white racism is bad, and yet he chose to include this. Furthermore, to my knowledge, it was only after this book that people even started to pay attention to what he said in 2003, so he was almost certainly the one doing the most to even publicize the fact that he had held these views in the first place - why would you manufacture plausible deniability to something you are promoting yourself?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
BY THE FALL of 2003, Clarence had graduated and I decided to share my ideas with the world. I began my public writing career on race with a column in FAMU’s student newspaper, The Famuan. On September 9, 2003, I wrote a piece counseling Black people to stop hating Whites for being themselves. Really, I was counseling myself. “I certainly understand blacks who have been wrapped up in a tornado of hate because they could not escape the encircling winds of truth about the destructive hand of the white man.” Wrapped in this tornado, I could not escape the fallacious idea that “Europeans are simply a different breed of human,” as I wrote, drawing on ideas in The Isis Papers. White people “make up only 10 percent of the world’s population” and they “have recessive genes. Therefore they’re facing extinction.” That’s why they are trying to “destroy my people,” I concluded. “Europeans are trying to survive and I can’t hate them for that.”
He calls it a "fallacious idea" right there.
More to the point, though, it's best read within the context of the entire book which, as said, is Kendi using examples of his own life as examples of fallacious ideas in general in the process of confession and self-contrition.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Whether one considers the pre-Crimea events in Ukraine as a coup, a revolution or something else, they were, in the main, internal events within Ukraine, not war. The Russian invasion of Crimea, on the other hand, was a clear act of aggression by one state against another (and, counter to the Russian narrative of bloodless takeover, there were several clashes between Russian and Ukrainian troops), meaning that is when fighting between the states, i.e. war, started.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Russia started the war in 2014 by invading Crimea. This should be a question of little doubt.
W did have military experience, however one might slice the practicalities of his time in the Texas Air National Guard. You're probably thinking of combat experience here.
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