Tuukka R

Withholding that amount of resources from others when you have no need for them yourself is a political position.

You also have to take rather extreme measures in order to become a billionaire.

And you sometimes pick one dandelion too many and forget how to walk faster than 3 km/h.

To be fair, most of Russian dissidents are angry about how the war is fought.

They would have wanted Ukraine to be taken over in a way that doesn’t spill Russians’ blood.

There are people in the Russia that are really against the whole war and want to see all of Ukraine’s territory liberated, but those are not many! I would estimate their number is somewhere between 100 and a bit over 1000 individuals. Among 140 million.

A good way to figure this is asking “who does Crimea belong to?”
Everyone who is really a dissident will say “Ukraine”, because in reality the case is crystal clear. Everybody who moved there knew it’s not part of the Russia in the same manner as other regions where the white-blue-red flag is waved. And yet they elected to move there. It’s a sad thing they’ll need to move away, yes, but they knew or at least had the responsibility to know what they are doing. And this is what Russian dissidents (both of them…) think.
But almost all “dissidents” will say “it’s complicated” or something similar. That’s how you know a person protesting against how the war is done.

And let me say: it is statistically extremely unlikely that the deported ones were among those 0,00071 % of the Russia’s population that are real dissidents.

This is good for China.

They haven’t been able to attack Taiwan because their only shipping way towards west goes through the straits of Malacca, and if those are blocked, China is in deep trouble.

This new route removes much of that danger. Now Taiwan can be attacked much more safely.

The indifference of us Europeans is beautiful.

Hooray.

In what way. Please elaborate.

(heh.)

Uh, wine tasters?

And, de facto also people whose job is to strike deals for a company. And ambassadors, I’d say.

you want to call it exists as less than 10 missiles. And of those, already two have been used.

maybe you give me source?

This is the first thing that I found with a quick internet search. It’ll give you enough pointers to find the rest of the information, I’m sure! So, here goes: https://www.eurasiantimes.com/russias-game-changer-oreshnik-missile/

Maybe you tell the international agreements?

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty

And then: There were blog posts analyzing the debris of the Rubezh missile launched back in November and December 2024. The debris shows that it is not a new development. It cannot be directly proven that the Oreshnik and Rubezh are the same missile, because Rubezh, being against treaties signed by USSR, was a very secret project, of which only very little information leaked. But, the debris shows that the “Oreshnik” missiles were made around when we know Rubezh had been made. And they are missiles for the same purpose. It’s unlikely that the Russia would have developed two separate missile types for the same purpose at the same time.

“the West’s hype”.

Heh.

The Rubezh/Oreshnik/Whatever you want to call it exists as less than 10 missiles. And of those, already two have been used. They were made almost 20 years ago and include components whose production was ended in 1990’s and can no longer be produced by any factory in any country.
The only reason Lukašenka is talking about the Rubezh missiles is that Putin wants to scare us into giving Ukraine to the Russia. I haven’t really seen any western hype of the Rubezh in the way Lukašenka talks about.

And furthermore: Rubezh is a type of missile that is banned by international agreements on reducing the nuclear danger. That the Russia has held to almost ten of those for several decades tells a lot about how dangerous the Russia is. While others have stopped using such mid-range ballistic missiles and have scrapped them, the Russia had just hidden them. And now has dug them back out and put the laber “Oreshnik” on them. Them having launched already two of their Rubezh (or Oreshnik, if you prefer that name) tells that they only use them for the purpose of scaring. If they really planned to use them for something serious, they would not launch one fifth of them without nuclear warheads as they have done now.

A cheater country, such as the Russia is, must fall.

BBC News says it was said using a megaphone when talking to a large crowd:

Petro shared a video on social media of him addressing a large crowd through a megaphone in Spanish on Friday.

He called for the formation of a “world salvation army, whose first task is to liberate Palestine”.

“That is why, from here in New York, I ask all soldiers in the United States Army not to point their rifles at humanity,” he said. “Disobey Trump’s order! Obey the order of humanity!”

You forgot to read the end of my comment.

We are almost completely in agreement.

(Of course Trump’s rhyme and reason are irrelevant here. The president of Colombia is not known as a moron and there is a demand for him to act like a diplomat even when visiting a moron. But, Trump, Mussolini and similar make an exception: the charter of Human Rights is the most important piece of rules there is, and it basically requires everybody to behave that way. Therefore: unusual but acceptable.)

“Disobey Trump’s orders” is what he said. Disobey horrible orders whether legal or illegal.

A ballsy thing for a president to go to a demonstration in another country and tell its military to disobey their own president. If the president of Portugal did the same in Denmark, I would absolutely expect him to be expelled from the Danish territory.

Personally, if any country’s president was to do the same in Finland, I would see that as an actual act of war by his country.

This all having been said: whatever is done against Trump is done for USA. The president of Colombia did an awesome thing and I’m happy he did it!

“Some Europeans fear”?!

Some Europeans fear that water is wet.

In 2022 it was impossible for Putin to use nukes, because launching nuclear weapons is one of the only thing in the Russia where the president really has no chance of deciding on things alone. Gerasimov is a professional soldier, and worked only because it’s his job. He has no actual values in play, except pride of being skilled at his job, and he will not allow his family to die just because of the Russia’s “honour” being violated. Similarly, Šojgu is a bootlicker who does everything for personal gain and the Moscow being obliterated by nukes is not something he sees as an acceptable price for anything at all. And in the Russia you need an order from the people in all of those three positions, or nothing will be launched.

Putin could never get Šojgu and Gerasimov to give such orders, and he knows that had he tried to, he would have lost his head almost immediately. Those people would have seen Putin as a direct threat to their loved ones, as would have most of who have any influence in the Russia. That would have been Putin’s end.

Now, the leadership of the military has been restructured to be more accommodating to Putin’s will, but it’s still not at a level where Putin can trust he’ll get both orders given by the other two people. And if he tries and fails … well, read above. His head will roll. Now he would actually have a chance of success, but he’s still maybe 80 % likely to fail if he tries. And actually… PACO.

Now is still a time when we can safely use military power against the Russia without a danger of a nuclear war. That time will not last forever, because Putin does want to use nukes and he is working to make it possible. He will, however, still need plenty more time for that. Luckily for him, especially Germans are giving it to him. Ironically, because they are afraid of nukes and don’t bother looking into how launching nukes works in the Russia.

It did, but much less severely.

Actually it was. But in much lesser ways.

What an idiotic continent we have here. Damn.

It is any better.

It’s also not okay what DC did, but the transgressions are very different in scale.

Kimmel was faired for saying “MAGA is trying to make it look like the shooter wasn’t a MAGA activist”, while Felker-Martin got fired for saying “it’s a good thing Kirk can no longer take part in podcasts.”

I don’t think either of those is grounds for firing, but it’s not good to bring them to the same level.

I wouldn’t call it “understanding” if you assume a meaning to a word that doesn’t have that meaning.

It’s funny in the same way as native Americans saying “ugh”. If you’re ignorant, you laugh. If you aren’t, you facepalm. A joke that just makes its teller look like an ignorant idiot who is happy to trample other cultures is not a joke that should me made.

I do understand it’s the entire point.

It’s also super annoying when English-speaker make new “languages” which are just English with each word substituted by another. The joke assumes that Latin is just a dialect of English.

So, what I’m trying to hint in a subtle manner between the lines is that the joke is not among the best ones out there. Of course you can go to some meta levels and find something funny about someone being so stupid that they assume that words have 100 % equal meanings across languages. But, meh.

The joke reeks of monolingual ignorance miles away.