> If not for a delay in a connecting flight, the incendiary bomb would likely have burst into flames in the belly of a plane flying high above the European Union. Instead, it ignited on the ground in Germany’s Leipzig airport, setting fire to a DHL air freight container.
Yesterday, a DHL cargo flight from Leipzig crashed on approach to Vilnius. One crew member died, three other were hospitalized. The plane narrowly missed 12 people who were in the building it hit. Reason for the crash is currently unknown, the possibility of intentional sabotage has made political circles anxious. https://avherald.com/h?article=520c0e2b&opt=0
Framing terrorism as "war" and saturating the news with it worked really well in recent history for transforming your country into a paranoid proto-fascist state.
>Western intelligence officials believe the attack, which took place in July, was a trial run by Russian agents who planned to place similar bombs on flights to the United States.
It's only a matter of time before they bring down a US Cargo/passenger plane. Perhaps Americans will finally wake up and come around to the fact that Putin and Russia are not their friends like Tulsi, Trump, Hegsseth, et al have said.
For what it's worth, I don't know a single Republican who thinks Putin is their friend. They just think that there might be a better way to contain your enemy than outright war. For the first time in my life, the Republicans around me are the ones who are championing non-war-like conflict resolution.
30% or so of Republicans are the extreme right who have been fully taken by propaganda. Those people are pro-russia, anti-america, as in, dismantle and burn the federal government to the ground. This is what they mean when they talk about "draining the swamp." It's born from the intersection of willful ignorance, resentment over their poverty, and targeted propaganda via algorithms that stokes radical belief.
Just because your friends aren't in that 30% doesn't mean they don't exist.
> Also, if you'll remember through the partisan haze of polarized thinking, it used to be considered a good and reasonable thing to not want war or unmeasured foreign intervention, and it was a widely held belief by the progressive side of U.S politics. Now however, the Republicans get derided for holding more to that view, or just accused of automatically being friends of Putin, which, as the other comment states, is a gross bit of mendacity.
Trump's "bromance" with Putin during his last term, coupled with extensive evidence of corruption, makes it reasonable to question whether he might prioritize Putin's interests over U.S. strategic goals. Historically, ties to foreign powers would disqualify a candidate from public office, yet the Republican Party seems largely willing to overlook these concerns. Even Joseph McCarthy, notorious for his paranoia about foreign influence, would likely see Trump as a textbook case — and for once, he wouldn’t be wrong.
> I'd be willing to bet money, to anyone who offered, that during the Trump presidency, the U.S will emphatically not cease support to Ukraine, because, certain posturing and a small few fringe nuts aside, the Republicans do know that Russia is the real aggressor and has to be shown a strong hand for the sake of keeping American reliability credible on the world stage. Even Trump knows this perfectly well.
As for the claim that Trump understands the importance of standing firm against Russia: his past behavior doesn't inspire confidence. I'd estimate at least a 30% chance that, under another Trump presidency, the U.S. could abruptly cut off support for Ukraine. Why? Because decisions wouldn't hinge on strategic considerations — they’d depend on Trump’s whims. Possible scenarios include:
• He feels like it.
• Putin flatters or bribes him.
• Ukraine refuses to pay him off when asked.
This pattern of impulsiveness defined his previous term, so why assume it would be any different now?
But..we did all those better ways, we signed agreements,we sacrificed small countries, that process of showing comprises got us where we are today. Which is..at war.
If conflict resolution means giving Ukraine to Russia, then I can agree with you. Vance says he doesn't care about what happens in Ukraine and Trump said he has a very good relationship with Putin and could stop the war in the first 24 hours after the election. Tulsi believes there are USA BioLabs in Ukraine and Putin was right for invading his peaceful neighbor. Hegseth believes Ukraine doesn't deserve US support and is unworthy of helping.
There is the old guard that understands very well that Russia is the greatest threat the US faces but they no longer have much of a voice. MAGA is in charge and they are fine with America's strategic defeat and the downfall of Western democracy.
This is a silly statement, for all of MAGA and the modern right's pitiful shortcomings.
Ukraine is profoundly low on the priority list of strategic American positions. Arguably even Crimea was more strategically important, and the US let that get annexed pretty comfortably when that happened. If Ukraine was seized it would set a terrible precedent for Europe - but the West doesn't have any strategic stakes there outside potential NATO candidates.
You're equating the physical (Ukraine, Crimea) with what this war is about. Putins goal wasn't to take Ukraine, his goal was to show the world that Western law and rules mean nothing. That the West is weak and lacks resolve. That NATO is a failure along with the USA/EU belief in Global Law and Independent states.
This is about destroying the principles of Democracy. That others should not look to America or the EU for salvation. He is creating a new world order with the help of China, Iran, and North Korea and succeeding. Look at the elections in the USA and EU. Parties that are sympathetic to Russia just like MAGA is sympathetic to Putin and Russia are gaining power. The West is on the cusp of a complete strategic defeat that will define the next century at a minimum.
Sounds like you assume that Putin would have only one goal. He's interested in BOTH the physical assets and the ability to take stuff from other countries.
The only reason he wants physical assets is to achieve his objective. Russia is one of the richest nations on earth in terms of natural resources, and Ukrainian land can't add much to that. It's only worth is to show the West that they can't stop him and destroy the belief in the USA/EU/NATO/Democracy.
Ukraine was a zero threat to him, but the ideals of the West were his destruction.
> but the ideals of the West were his destruction.
If you earnestly believe that, then he succeeded with his "Little green men" back in 2014. I legitimately think you are being hyperbolic about the "death of democracy" et. al. because the Ukraine incident is not unprecedented. The only thing that's new is America rolling over to give a shit - Crimea already proved to the world that the United States is more interested in domestic security than foreign affairs, and Ukraine is just reconfirming what we already know.
And look - while I personally want Ukraine to remain independent, you can't close your eyes to the realpolitik at play. America has virtually no reason to stand against Russia over Ukraine, besides to virtue signal the fact that they still consider Russia an adversary (which nobody really doubted anyways). Europe has a motivation to protect Ukraine to project their power and emphasize their defensive stance, but Ukraine also isn't part of NATO so not every nation is required to mobilize. Russia is the only power that can justify sending braindead-tier infantry waves into a meat grinder for the sake of recouping some USSR nostalgia. Nobody else cares enough, it's plain to see in the mobilizations.
> It's only worth is to show the West that they can't stop him and destroy the belief in the USA/EU/NATO/Democracy.
That's a very Western perspective. I think you're correct that this is what a lot of NATO members feel right now, but also NATO wasn't attacked. Russia has a lot of objectives in this war, and I feel confident that saying "sowing distrust among NATO members" wasn't the primary goal.
this is very short-sighted… you think US strategically cared about Vietnam?! it doesn’t matter whether ukraine is on the US strategic priority list - it matters what ukraine represents. if US is cool with russia invading european sovereign states - fantastic. surely putin being a fair and cool guy and all will stop there, right?
I'm not exactly a scholar on the Vietnam war, but I don't think it was about what Vietnam "represented". Communism had already been spreading with incredible ease, helped by the USSR's investments, and we were afraid of it spreading more, as it's a detriment to capitalism's global profit extraction scheme. There was a very real and very big risk to our bottom line with the whole communism fight. If Ukraine falls, Russia gets a whole bunch of agriculture exports, but other than that what do we lose? Sure it sets a bad precedent for global tensions and all, but the US isn't at risk of losing as much as we (thought) we would with the Vietnam fight.
It wasn't just the bottom line, communism was also killing a lot of people and not very nice on the human rights front. It didn't spread with ease due to helpful investment, it spread at gun point due to their ease at killing people. Possibly coming to Taiwan soon. You can see how the capitalist profit extraction works by looking at the poverty in south Korea compared to the utopia up north.
>communism was also killing a lot of people and not very nice on the human rights front
So the US decided to up their killings?
"The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World is a 2020 political history book by American journalist and author Vincent Bevins. It concerns U.S. government support for and complicity in anti-communist mass killings around the world and their aggregate consequences from the Cold War until the present era. The title is a reference to Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, during which an estimated one million people were killed in an effort to destroy the political left and movements for government reform in the country.
The book goes on to describe subsequent replications of the strategy of mass murder, against government reform and economic reform movements in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. The killings in Indonesia by the American-backed Indonesian forces were so successful in culling the left and economic reform movements that the term "Jakarta" was later used to refer to the genocidal aspects of similar later plans implemented by other authoritarian capitalist regimes with the assistance of the United States."[0]
>American anti communist folk killed a few people too
There is something deeply wrong with talking like that about 2 million deaths.
Anyway, if you lump up all the 'communist' regimes, you should do the same with capitalist regimes too. Bengali famine gives you up to 4 million deaths for a start.[0]
Weapons of war don't just appear before a revolution starts, somebody has to buy them. Of course the spread of communism was helped by the USSR's active investment in revolutionaries in other countries.
For what it's worth, I don't know a single Republican who thinks Putin is their friend.
For what it's worth, here's what Trump said about his relationship with Putin recently:
“You know, he was a friend of mine,” the former president told the athlete on speaker phone, as recorded in a viral video. “I got along great with him.”
For the first time in my life, the Republicans around me are the ones who are championing non-war-like conflict resolution.
And yet, by not just saying "Look, we need to negotiate with Russia", but literally "We don't give a fuck about Ukraine, and we'll end the war in 24 hours" (meaning, if we are to take them at their word, very likely agreeing to the vast bulk of Putin's stated terms, including his demand for recognized sovereignty on the territories he is claiming) -- they are in effect signaling a promise to fully legitimize Putin's war aims, thus championing his very much "war-like" style of conflict resolution.
From the article:
> If not for a delay in a connecting flight, the incendiary bomb would likely have burst into flames in the belly of a plane flying high above the European Union. Instead, it ignited on the ground in Germany’s Leipzig airport, setting fire to a DHL air freight container.
Yesterday, a DHL cargo flight from Leipzig crashed on approach to Vilnius. One crew member died, three other were hospitalized. The plane narrowly missed 12 people who were in the building it hit. Reason for the crash is currently unknown, the possibility of intentional sabotage has made political circles anxious. https://avherald.com/h?article=520c0e2b&opt=0
If these attacks are likely not a serious threat.
And if you want to get payback you don't need to take action against Russia.
You can simply donate military aid to Ukraine, which they will convert to Russian casualties.
So why respond to a cut cable?
Framing terrorism as "war" and saturating the news with it worked really well in recent history for transforming your country into a paranoid proto-fascist state.
>Why isn't it fighting back?
There has been $36bn in military assistance to Ukraine and Criminal Court arrest warrants from the Hague for Putin, Gerasimov and others.
Maybe we could do more but it isn't nothing.
>Western intelligence officials believe the attack, which took place in July, was a trial run by Russian agents who planned to place similar bombs on flights to the United States.
It's only a matter of time before they bring down a US Cargo/passenger plane. Perhaps Americans will finally wake up and come around to the fact that Putin and Russia are not their friends like Tulsi, Trump, Hegsseth, et al have said.
For what it's worth, I don't know a single Republican who thinks Putin is their friend. They just think that there might be a better way to contain your enemy than outright war. For the first time in my life, the Republicans around me are the ones who are championing non-war-like conflict resolution.
30% or so of Republicans are the extreme right who have been fully taken by propaganda. Those people are pro-russia, anti-america, as in, dismantle and burn the federal government to the ground. This is what they mean when they talk about "draining the swamp." It's born from the intersection of willful ignorance, resentment over their poverty, and targeted propaganda via algorithms that stokes radical belief.
Just because your friends aren't in that 30% doesn't mean they don't exist.
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When you ask a question like that, are you making an implicit commitment to change your mind if a source is provided?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10763974/
> Also, if you'll remember through the partisan haze of polarized thinking, it used to be considered a good and reasonable thing to not want war or unmeasured foreign intervention, and it was a widely held belief by the progressive side of U.S politics. Now however, the Republicans get derided for holding more to that view, or just accused of automatically being friends of Putin, which, as the other comment states, is a gross bit of mendacity.
Trump's "bromance" with Putin during his last term, coupled with extensive evidence of corruption, makes it reasonable to question whether he might prioritize Putin's interests over U.S. strategic goals. Historically, ties to foreign powers would disqualify a candidate from public office, yet the Republican Party seems largely willing to overlook these concerns. Even Joseph McCarthy, notorious for his paranoia about foreign influence, would likely see Trump as a textbook case — and for once, he wouldn’t be wrong.
> I'd be willing to bet money, to anyone who offered, that during the Trump presidency, the U.S will emphatically not cease support to Ukraine, because, certain posturing and a small few fringe nuts aside, the Republicans do know that Russia is the real aggressor and has to be shown a strong hand for the sake of keeping American reliability credible on the world stage. Even Trump knows this perfectly well.
As for the claim that Trump understands the importance of standing firm against Russia: his past behavior doesn't inspire confidence. I'd estimate at least a 30% chance that, under another Trump presidency, the U.S. could abruptly cut off support for Ukraine. Why? Because decisions wouldn't hinge on strategic considerations — they’d depend on Trump’s whims. Possible scenarios include:
• He feels like it.
• Putin flatters or bribes him.
• Ukraine refuses to pay him off when asked.
This pattern of impulsiveness defined his previous term, so why assume it would be any different now?
But..we did all those better ways, we signed agreements,we sacrificed small countries, that process of showing comprises got us where we are today. Which is..at war.
If conflict resolution means giving Ukraine to Russia, then I can agree with you. Vance says he doesn't care about what happens in Ukraine and Trump said he has a very good relationship with Putin and could stop the war in the first 24 hours after the election. Tulsi believes there are USA BioLabs in Ukraine and Putin was right for invading his peaceful neighbor. Hegseth believes Ukraine doesn't deserve US support and is unworthy of helping.
There is the old guard that understands very well that Russia is the greatest threat the US faces but they no longer have much of a voice. MAGA is in charge and they are fine with America's strategic defeat and the downfall of Western democracy.
> they are fine with America's strategic defeat
This is a silly statement, for all of MAGA and the modern right's pitiful shortcomings.
Ukraine is profoundly low on the priority list of strategic American positions. Arguably even Crimea was more strategically important, and the US let that get annexed pretty comfortably when that happened. If Ukraine was seized it would set a terrible precedent for Europe - but the West doesn't have any strategic stakes there outside potential NATO candidates.
You're equating the physical (Ukraine, Crimea) with what this war is about. Putins goal wasn't to take Ukraine, his goal was to show the world that Western law and rules mean nothing. That the West is weak and lacks resolve. That NATO is a failure along with the USA/EU belief in Global Law and Independent states.
This is about destroying the principles of Democracy. That others should not look to America or the EU for salvation. He is creating a new world order with the help of China, Iran, and North Korea and succeeding. Look at the elections in the USA and EU. Parties that are sympathetic to Russia just like MAGA is sympathetic to Putin and Russia are gaining power. The West is on the cusp of a complete strategic defeat that will define the next century at a minimum.
Sounds like you assume that Putin would have only one goal. He's interested in BOTH the physical assets and the ability to take stuff from other countries.
The only reason he wants physical assets is to achieve his objective. Russia is one of the richest nations on earth in terms of natural resources, and Ukrainian land can't add much to that. It's only worth is to show the West that they can't stop him and destroy the belief in the USA/EU/NATO/Democracy.
Ukraine was a zero threat to him, but the ideals of the West were his destruction.
> but the ideals of the West were his destruction.
If you earnestly believe that, then he succeeded with his "Little green men" back in 2014. I legitimately think you are being hyperbolic about the "death of democracy" et. al. because the Ukraine incident is not unprecedented. The only thing that's new is America rolling over to give a shit - Crimea already proved to the world that the United States is more interested in domestic security than foreign affairs, and Ukraine is just reconfirming what we already know.
And look - while I personally want Ukraine to remain independent, you can't close your eyes to the realpolitik at play. America has virtually no reason to stand against Russia over Ukraine, besides to virtue signal the fact that they still consider Russia an adversary (which nobody really doubted anyways). Europe has a motivation to protect Ukraine to project their power and emphasize their defensive stance, but Ukraine also isn't part of NATO so not every nation is required to mobilize. Russia is the only power that can justify sending braindead-tier infantry waves into a meat grinder for the sake of recouping some USSR nostalgia. Nobody else cares enough, it's plain to see in the mobilizations.
> It's only worth is to show the West that they can't stop him and destroy the belief in the USA/EU/NATO/Democracy.
That's a very Western perspective. I think you're correct that this is what a lot of NATO members feel right now, but also NATO wasn't attacked. Russia has a lot of objectives in this war, and I feel confident that saying "sowing distrust among NATO members" wasn't the primary goal.
this is very short-sighted… you think US strategically cared about Vietnam?! it doesn’t matter whether ukraine is on the US strategic priority list - it matters what ukraine represents. if US is cool with russia invading european sovereign states - fantastic. surely putin being a fair and cool guy and all will stop there, right?
I'm not exactly a scholar on the Vietnam war, but I don't think it was about what Vietnam "represented". Communism had already been spreading with incredible ease, helped by the USSR's investments, and we were afraid of it spreading more, as it's a detriment to capitalism's global profit extraction scheme. There was a very real and very big risk to our bottom line with the whole communism fight. If Ukraine falls, Russia gets a whole bunch of agriculture exports, but other than that what do we lose? Sure it sets a bad precedent for global tensions and all, but the US isn't at risk of losing as much as we (thought) we would with the Vietnam fight.
It wasn't just the bottom line, communism was also killing a lot of people and not very nice on the human rights front. It didn't spread with ease due to helpful investment, it spread at gun point due to their ease at killing people. Possibly coming to Taiwan soon. You can see how the capitalist profit extraction works by looking at the poverty in south Korea compared to the utopia up north.
>communism was also killing a lot of people and not very nice on the human rights front
So the US decided to up their killings?
"The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World is a 2020 political history book by American journalist and author Vincent Bevins. It concerns U.S. government support for and complicity in anti-communist mass killings around the world and their aggregate consequences from the Cold War until the present era. The title is a reference to Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, during which an estimated one million people were killed in an effort to destroy the political left and movements for government reform in the country.
The book goes on to describe subsequent replications of the strategy of mass murder, against government reform and economic reform movements in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. The killings in Indonesia by the American-backed Indonesian forces were so successful in culling the left and economic reform movements that the term "Jakarta" was later used to refer to the genocidal aspects of similar later plans implemented by other authoritarian capitalist regimes with the assistance of the United States."[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method
It does seem American anti communist folk killed a few people too. Though the scores seem to be about US 2 million, commies 90 million.
>American anti communist folk killed a few people too
There is something deeply wrong with talking like that about 2 million deaths.
Anyway, if you lump up all the 'communist' regimes, you should do the same with capitalist regimes too. Bengali famine gives you up to 4 million deaths for a start.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
too funny... 2 million maybe just in the last decade? :)
Weapons of war don't just appear before a revolution starts, somebody has to buy them. Of course the spread of communism was helped by the USSR's active investment in revolutionaries in other countries.
For what it's worth, I don't know a single Republican who thinks Putin is their friend.
For what it's worth, here's what Trump said about his relationship with Putin recently:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...Of course he's blatantly talking out of his ass, as usual.
Just like he is when he tells you that he's anti-war.
For the first time in my life, the Republicans around me are the ones who are championing non-war-like conflict resolution.
And yet, by not just saying "Look, we need to negotiate with Russia", but literally "We don't give a fuck about Ukraine, and we'll end the war in 24 hours" (meaning, if we are to take them at their word, very likely agreeing to the vast bulk of Putin's stated terms, including his demand for recognized sovereignty on the territories he is claiming) -- they are in effect signaling a promise to fully legitimize Putin's war aims, thus championing his very much "war-like" style of conflict resolution.
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