One of the best uses of my tax dollars in my entire lifetime.
First time in my lifetime I’ve seen the US military might truly used for something good.
Me too. I’ve opposed every US war that occured in my 50 year life except this one.
when you’re on the side of the US state department, you’ve done something wrong
Yup.
And you’re not suspicious at all, as to why that’s the case?
It’s infuriating to me to see Democracy Now reporting get downvoted. 🤬
Hold on just a minute while I base my worldview on YouTube…
No, base your “worldview” on the echo chamber in these Ukraine threads, they all learned their “worldview” in Crusader Kings 3. Some of em in “Mein Kampf” it would seem.
Who doesn’t like their tax dollars being spent on killing people instead of socialist stuff like healthcare, education, social workers and government services that actually serve citizens.
The USA could afford what’s being provided to Ukraine and socialized benefits. But chooses not to because of some dumb reason or another.
This is the answer. It isn’t a zero sum game.
It’s more the hypocrisy of some people. The ones who cheer for a huge defense/foreign aid budget year after year no matter who it’s for, and then leave bitchy comments on FB about student loan forgiveness being “unfair” because it uses their tax dollars.
I mean, yeah, they have the biggest money printer on the planet, so they could’ve socialized almost everything for their citizens if it didn’t go all into their black budgets, military, bribery and foreign meddling instead, but here they are, 32T in debt, double the debt from 10 years ago, ~100k of debt per person. If that’s not a failed state, I don’t know what is.
You don’t know what is.
If that’s not a failed state, I don’t know what is.
You probably don’t know what is it. I mean, look at South Africa for a recent example of a failed state.
perhaps do some research on the colonial history of South Africa and Western exploitation and read up on the definition of the term failed state and then look at some news reports regarding the US. I don’t know how some of you people keep on coming up with these cheap rebuttals that you obviously haven’t spent more than a minute of thinking on.
So, in your mind, helping to prevent civilians from dying in a war zone and stopping countries being taken over by foreign powers to be exploited is not a worthy humanitarian effort?
European countries are taking somewhat decent care of Ukrainian refugees, which can’t be said for refugees that aren’t white skinned.
And did you just collate military equipment with a humanitarian effort or am misreading that?
I’m in full support of any real humanitarian aid possible: Support their wounded and sick, support their people with basic needs (generators/energy, food, water, clothing, temporary housing, psych support etc).
Sometimes I’m really surprised at some of these questions you people come up with.
Edit: Typo.
The main difference between Ukrainian refugees and what we usually get is that Ukrainians are, without exception, well-educated enough to start working right away, and not just in unskilled low-income jobs. Compare that with, say, Somalis with virtually no education, and not even able to sit through a class because they never got accustomed to as kids, then competing with natives for a very limited number of those low-income jobs. That’s why Ukrainians get working permits straight away while we’d rather pay welfare for the Somalis until they’re ready.
I don’t know what it is with Seppos and making everything about race. There’s actual fucking issues with integrating people from non-developed countries that are completely absent in the case of Ukraine. Ukraine may be piss-poor, yes, but its fundamentals are solid, quite a bit better than Romania and Bulgaria even I’d say and those are EU members.
EDIT: While PISA numbers are to be taken with a whole salt shaker as measuring good education is notoriously difficult (see “teach the test”) Ukraine outranks Greece across the disciplines. More or less head-to head with Italy.
I was talking about the way they were treated, not which refugee is the better worker drone.
Ukrainians don’t burn their passports and refuse to aid in their identification, if that’s what you’re alluding to because that’s the kind of stuff gets you shitcanned in the “You can stay in a camp with full board and meagre pocket money and leave the country at any time but forget starting a life here” way, as the only reason to do that is if you don’t actually qualify for refugee status or asylum. But, again, nothing to do with race.
Your basically proving my point, I rest my case.
Europe has taken in millions of non-white refugees and taken great care of them. How many have Russia and china taken in? India? Brazil?
Look it up. I’m not your personal researcher, sorry. I’m happy to provide sources to backup claims I’ve brought up myself.
I never compared Europe to other nations in terms of harboring refugees and I didn’t even imply that Europe hasn’t been taking in refugees. I wish you’d spend a bit more time reading and understanding what people are writing instead of just coming up with cheap rhetorical or whataboutism questions.
My point is people to want to go there. They want to go to Europe because they’ll have good opportunities and be treated relatively well.
The US is already spending as much federal tax dollars per capita on healthcare as the UK spends on the NHS. Figures that bailing out hospitals when patients invariably default on their debt is expensive: In the US they have tons of people ending up in ER requiring expensive treatment that would’ve been way cheaper and easier to treat preventively – but to do prevention you need to be able to afford a doctor’s visit. Sure you can stop spending that money but then you either let hospitals go bankrupt, or you have to allow them to reject patients and have them dying on the streets. Even for Americans that’s a bit too much.
I don’t really have the numbers for education but one big point there is that in the US, education is largely funded by local taxes, that is, schools in low-income areas are severely underfunded, while those in high-income areas are overfunded. If anything it should be the exact opposite, the worst areas need the best schools to lift them up.
But fixing either would cut into corporate profits and/or severely alleviate income equality (and, in the US, thereby, race inequality) so, yeah, don’t hold your breath.
Why would countries just ignore global authoritarian threats
To be global authoritarian you have to be the wealthiest and most powerful. And currently there is only one government and its army that takes this title.
I guess being able to trigger global nuclear war is not global enough threat for you?
What is a “global authoritarian”?
Yo, mate! Your words! I copied them from your post…
Yes and do you understand what they mean?
I do!
authoritarian threats
This is a meaningless term used in this way. Every state is authoritarian, by definition. The only “state” that isn’t authoritarian is anarchy, and that’s only not an authoritarian state because it’s not a state. Use more accurate terms if you want to make a point.
Countries are ignoring global authoritarian threats, by ignoring themselves, but that’s probably not the point you were trying to make.
They have no need for healthcare, education and stuff. They are afraid of their own shadows, they just need guns to defend themselves. In the end, they can just eat those bullets to survive. …or shoot some skool.
And one of the worst uses of the 2 brain cells you have left. Your tax dollars are the driving force for war and misery across the globe for decades now, the only difference is that your government isn’t hiding it anymore, because they know now that you zombies will give all your money for some entertainment on the news after shooting up a school.
if you want to call attention to the fucked up shit that the USA and NATO has done in the last couple of decades, comparing it with supplying weapons to a democracy to defend itself against an invading bunch of fascist war criminals is definitely NOT helping your case
edit: I have been informed that Ukraine isn’t perfect, and that therefor the invasion and the long list of war crimes perpetrated by the invaders are justified
Democracy? The US and NATO aren’t fighting for democracy. They are losing a cheap sex tourist destination in Eastern Europe because of this war. That’s worth all those Billions! Don’t give me the “defending democracy” excuse!
A democracy that recently announced that it postponed elections, a year after declaring the opposition parties as illegal.
You know that postponing elections during a war is : a, fucking logical, because how to fuck are you going to get a representative vote if half of the country has fled or is on the frontline and b, their constitution says there can’t be elections during martial law. source Every fucking pro Russian troll arguments in this thread need to be ousted here before this place gets to be a Russian troll pit as well.
Just the reply I was expecting, thanks for walking right into the trap where you conveniently failed to even mention the opposition part.
And I’m the troll.
Edit:
Even Foreign Policy isn’t as one-sided as you are in their portrayal of the situation:
Concern over the decision to postpone Ukraine’s elections has come from both Ukraine’s friends and foes. […] On the other hand, PACE President Tiny Kox said that while he recognizes the enormity of the struggle Ukraine faces, the country must uphold its obligations under international agreements to hold elections. “It is up to [Ukraine] how to solve this challenge,” he told a Council of Europe summit in May, adding that “there will be no complaints against Ukraine if the elections are not ideal. But if you do not hold elections, then everyone will have questions about you … without elections, democracy is impossible.”
Unless PACE is also just a Russian troll. 🤡
But indeed, elections during war/state of emergency are unconstitutional and highly impractible. Still funny you dodged the opposition point I made.
Untill you give me a source that states that the opposition isn’t able to function, I’m going to treat that part of your argument as blatant misinformation.
At least you’re open about your complete lack of awareness of this war. It’s shocking you’re even participating in this discussion though. The arrogance of offloading basic research of topics from a year ago to someone else to prove that I’m not spreading misinformation is quite something though.
Ukraine has had to take extraordinary measures to fight Russia’s invasion. Among them, the government has consolidated the country’s television outlets and dissolved rival political parties.
Source is NPR: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110577439/zelenskyy-has-consolidated-ukraines-tv-outlets-and-dissolved-rival-political-par
Okay comrade…
Jawohl Herr Obersturmbannführer! Für das Vaterland!
Die mad, fash.
It is all reflection.
Meanwhile we are giving Almost 4billion/yr to Israel.
I mean, it’s an apartheid state killing and looting brown people, so that’s typical US foreign policy.
What is your point? Is the Ukraine aid too low, Israel too high?
Porque no los dos?
Wat?
Why not both?
Link without paywall, first was fubar
This war is the best thing to happen to the military industrial complex since the cold war.
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Countries are still increasing their defence spending. My investment in Raytheon that was done over 6 months ago has netted me a negative increase of -2,42%.
It’s never late enough for you to beat that.
But you still have to pay back your student loans and pay a small fortune for healthcare because fuck you.
Two have basically nothing to do with each other.
We are still the richest nation in the world. 2.3 billion sounds like a lot, but its nothing to the us gov, it’s nothing to the defense budget alone, and it is actively wrecking the military capabilities of one of our top geopolitical rivals.
I’m not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of the Russia/Ukraine situation, but I know this is peanuts compared to what it could cost us, and we don’t even have boots on the ground. This is the deal of a century.
Be mad at the corrupt piece of shit republicans forcing you to go into crippling debt for healthcare and education, not the innocent Ukrainians fighting for their lives and democracy.
The good thing about a 2-party system is that you can always point to the other party as to why things are the way they are. :)
Why would I only be mad at the Republicans? Joe Biden and most of the Democrats don’t support single payer or free tertiary education either.
American pays mores per capita for healthcare than most countries with a single payer system.
You’d actually save money if you changed.
I get your point, but I’m not sure if that’s true. Americans in general are very unhealthy. I think that might explain why it’s more expensive at least somewhat.
Do you not see the chicken-or-egg situation here? They’re more unhealthy because of bad healthcare. That (bad) healthcare is more expensive because they’re more unhealthy.
Moreover, much of the reason the healthcare is so expensive is because of insurance overhead, for-profit middlemen (including hospitals, private equity owning doctors offices, etc), massive prescription medication markups because people can’t go without medication, and other inefficiencies in the system. Even with an unhealthy population, it doesn’t need to be nearly as expensive as it is.
Only second to third hand knowledge, essentially what I vacuum up from what US Americans write, but I think the issue is also that a lot of your food is just really unhealthy. I know from the keto subs that many basic ingredients have added sugar for no good reason, and that’s not even going into that whole HFC thing.
a lot of your food is just really unhealthy. I know from the keto subs that many basic ingredients have added sugar for no good reason, and that’s not even going into that whole HFC thing.
That is true. It is possible to eat only healthy options if you make a concerted effort to, but if you casually just eat what’s convenient, or eat at restaurants, you will be consuming astronomical portions and really wacky macro ratios.
People in the USA make the “well unhealthy food is cheap” argument which is only partially true; the more accurate claim is “convenient food is unhealthy”. I spend significantly less money on healthy ingredients and make my own food than someone who is buying convenient microwavable and prepared meals; but, it takes me a decent amount of time each day to cook versus a minute watching a microwave. I think cultural aspects of being overworked sneak in to this situation as well: when you have so little free time, and have worn yourself out at work, unless you really enjoy the act of cooking, you are likely to just reach for convenience rather than putting in effort to cook something healthy. Then, you have the interaction of eating unhealthy foods to self-soothe as a method of coping with the reality of being overworked.
There are a lot of moving pieces but, all else being equal (that is, the population eats the same things and keeps the same activity level): the healthcare system in the USA could have a lot less waste and overhead (read: siphoned profits) and thus be a lot less costly to interact with.
I see it. It makes sense. I just don’t know if it’d initially be cheaper. I still think it’s the right thing to do, but it might take a generation for the savings to start happening.
The second best time to plant a tree
That doesn’t help, but there’s genuinely a huge amount of money being siphoned off in the form of profits along the way.
Americans aren’t that much worse than other countries.
Yo can us citizen pleebs get some funding for our class wa… living expenses.
Good 🇺🇦
Can we just give nukes to Ukraine now and stop the war?
You think that’s enough? Or do we still need to give them more money?
(Let’s take note that the citizens are still poor, and Ukraine is still losing, reportedly still being outgunned as well)
Uhh, wat? Ukraine is currently regaining territory from Russia, how are they losing?
Fucking tankies.
Unfortunately this is lemmy.ml, which means the place is crawling with tankies. The admins of this instance are openly tankies, and I’ve seen so many braindead stupid takes from people who can’t see anything beyond “USA bad”.
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for real, I’ve never seen such a concentration of fascist bootlickers in one place
Lemmy.world, lemmy.ee, and beehaw.org are options. Note that Beehaw is really aiming for a nice, curated community, so that effects the availability of content.
The instances you join might still federate with lemmygrad.ml or lemmy.ml, but thankfully you can block garbage instances like those and exploding heads.
How much money do you want to bet? You seem confident and it seems like you read your news about the topic.
Idk where you got this from, but Ukraine won in Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv. Currently the front moves very slowly towards Russia. No, the offensive isn‘t a huge success and I would even consider it a failure, but the fact that Ukraine can even start an offensive is proving that the weapon deliveries are working.
I wouldn’t call it anything yet, Ukrainians haven’t even used the bulk of their fresh troops and equipment.
But why tho. This could be just propaganda. Hopefully not.
No doubt it’s complicated, but some key factors are
- Availability of ammunition (cluster munitions may help here)
- Destroying artillery before advancing (the daily numbers have been looking good)
- Removing mines before advancing
- Disabling logistics (e.g. strikes on bridges, warehouses)
- Waiting for a lucky opportunity
It doesn’t cost them much to do things slowly, but keeping the Kremlin on its toes and embarrassed is good. The longer Ukraine holds on, the more equipment they get, like F-16s, Abrams, and ATACMS.
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