DreamerOfImprobableDreams

It’s a far right conspiracy theory, that OP’s trying to tie to legit criticism of the CIA’s atrocities despite having nothing to do with each other-- all in order to try to hide the fact that it’s literally part of the Great Replacement conspiracy.

Because if everyone involved is quitting their jobs, they’ll have no money with which to buy food. Which means they’ll have to farm it themselves. And farming, even with top-of-the-line modern tech, is backbreaking fucking work. Also unpredictable as hell: bad harvests aren’t uncommon, especially for novice farmers with no formal training like these guys would be.

In other words, one bad harvest, and everyone in the system you’re proposing fucking dies. Yeah, there’s a reason in the 1800s people were abandoning their family farms for the horrorshow of Victorian era-factories en masse: because even that hell was still preferable to farming.

And every Saturday morning, all the clothes vanish from my hamper and re-appear clean and hung up in my closet / folded in my drawers!

February 24, 2014. The residents of Crimea wake up to find soldiers all over their peninsula. They wear no insignia, refuse to answer any questions about who they are or what they want. But they speak with Russian accents. The Ukrainian military, leaderless, stripped to the bone by Yanukovych’s corruption, can’t do anything but watch.

Within a few weeks, “referendums” are held under the watchful eye of these mysterious men with machine guns. Crimea “votes” to join the Russian federation with 98%+ of the vote.

Four months after that, as Ukraine is gearing up to hold presidential elections to replace Yanukovych, pro-Russian “separatists” suddenly pop up in most Eastern and Southern Ukrainian oblasts, seizing control of government buildings and demanding their regions be annexed by Russia. And I’m sure the fact that these “Ukrainian separatists” all had Russian accents, and many just happened to look exactly like known FSB officers who’d “mysteriously” quit just a few days before was a total coincidence, too!

Fortunately, they’re prevented from seizing power in most oblasts. Unfortunately, that’s when Russian “volunteers” “on vacation” roll over the border in the Donbass with tanks they “bought at military surplus stores”. (Seriously, the Russian government actually tried to claim that in its propaganda!) Again, the Ukrainian army is such a disorganized mess there’s nothing it can do.

Fortunately, this time people know what’s going on, so volunteer militias form to push back the invaders. (As you might expect, there was precisely zero oversight or vetting of these militias for the first few years, so some did have some pretty extremist beliefs-- this was the Azov Battalion’s origin story, for example. Ukraine’s since integrated most into the real army and forced them to at least make a show of abandoning their extremist beliefs; how effective this has been, someone with more knowledge of the situation than me will have to say.)

After months of fighting, the conflict settles into relatively frozen lines. At this point, the EU tries to mediate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, called the Minsk Agreement. The deal is never actually fully implemented, mainly because Russia refused to hold up its side of the bargain. But it does cool the war down to a frozen conflict. Between 2015 and 2021, only a few dozen troops die per year, standing guard on unchanging frontlines.

Ukrainian society obviously doesn’t forget or forgive any of this. But gradually, the war drops in importance in people’s minds. People’s minds turn towards more immediate concerns, like combating corruption, fighting poverty, and joining the EU (which is seen by most Ukrainians as necessary to accomplish the first two goals).

However, in the background, the country is rebuilding its gutted armed forces. In hopes of being good enough to join NATO, sure. But also, you know. Just in case.

And then in February 2022, “just in case” became reality.

This is the last straw for a ton of people, who are sick of the corruption, the chaos, the government that runs roughshod over their rights and lives while leaving them to rot in poverty. The protests swell in size. The riot police step up the violence against them, but that only makes people madder, and more determined to take to the streets.

(This is also at least partly because opposition also sees this as their big political chance and publicizes the hell out of the protests, encouraging more people to join in. The US Embassy also makes no secret about being on the protestor’s side, too, with the then-US Ambassador even going out to the Maidan to give cookies to the protestors one day. This is where a lot of the conspiracy theories about “US backed coup!!!11!111!11111!!!” come from, but like, my brother in Christ, you cannot psy-op hundreds of thousands of people into massive street demonstrations for months on end unless they’re willing and fucking eager to play along.)

Then, on February 20th, 2014, after two months of escalating protests, the riot police open fire with live ammunition. 100 people are killed. And the protestors still refuse to give in! In fact, they begin threatening civil war if Yanukovych doesn’t resign, immediately.

February 23, 2014. Yanukovych vanishes, without a trace. (A few days later, he’ll pop up in Russia, where he’s been living ever since.) The protestors won! Sure, Ukraine is left leaderless-- there’s no Constitutional provision handling what to do if the president just up and vanishes without resigning-- but it’s not like anything’s likely to go wrong in the next few days while they sort things out. Right?

I’ll try to summarize, then. WARNING: Long post incoming, scroll to bottom for tl:dr!

In 2004, this pro-Russian politician called Viktor Yanukovych was accused of rigging that year’s presidential elections. There were massive street demonstrations calling for new elections, which got named the “Orange Revolution” because the protestors wore orange, the color of the opposition. Eventually, Yanukovych relented and elections were re-run with international observers to make sure they were fair, and sure enough, the opposition won.

Jump forward five years. The opposition’s had five years to blow through all their goodwill and make plenty of mistakes on their own. Yanukovych comes back onto the scene. But instead of rigging the election, this time he gets help from an American Republican operative called Paul Manafort, who helps him pull all the same culture-war ratfucking bullshit we’re used to in the States on Ukraine. It depressingly works, Yanukovych wins the election fair and square.

Jump forward four more years (it’s November 2013 now). During that time, Yanukovych has robbed Ukraine blind, systematically hacked away at what few democratic protections it had, and stoked culture war resentment to keep people at each other’s throats and away from his. People are getting increasingly sick of his BS.

The final straw comes when Yanukovych is supposed to sign a major trade agreement with the EU, one which would let Ukrainians live and work freely there. Ukraine is desperately poor, the EU is rich and has good paying jobs, this is a deal which could dramatically change people’s lives for the better. And then at the last second, Yanukovych refuses to sign the deal, and instead signs one with Russia.

Pro-Western Ukrainians took to the streets to protest. Initially, these protests were pretty small, and seemed likely to fizzle out by the end of the weekend. And then, Yanukovych makes the incredibly smart decision to sic his personal riot police on the protestors in Kyiv’s Maidan square.

This video does a pretty good job summarizing things!

Seizing Rostok Von Don was a clever initial play, since its a major logistics hub.

This also means if the coup lasts for more than a few days, the Russian Army’s going to start running out of ammunition in significant portions of the front in Ukraine.

Or maybe he told Prigozhin he’d back his coup attempt, so Prigozhin would make the first move and look like the instigator, so Putin and the MoD could look like they have the moral high ground by “defending” Russia from Wagner’s “unprovoked” coup.

It’s exactly the kind of “seems clever until you think it through for longer than a few seconds and realize it’s absolute idiocy” type shit Putin pulls all the time.

Did people’s parents not teach them about putting things on the internet they didn’t want shared?

They used to, then social media became a thing and they stopped. Suddenly, it was normal to put your entire life up online for other people to see, and if you didn’t feel comfortable doing that you were the weird one.

My rule is, never post anything you wouldn’t mind the media tracing back to you IRL and then making the top story of the day in your country. Because, while rare, that does occasionally happen!

Okay, here’s why it upsets me so much when people call the US an “empire”. There’s a cold civil war in this country right now about who we’re supposed to be. Should America be a multicultural, inclusive democracy trying to atone for the sins of the past and build a better, kinder future, or is it an imperialistic ethnostate built on white supremacy?

When people write America off as always having been the latter, and act like it’s doomed to always be the latter, they’re effectively giving up on the fight. They’re basically saying they agree with the far right, their vision of the country is correct. Which gives them more power.

There’s so much good here, mixed in with the bad. This country has made incredible progress towards becoming a more perfect union. Sure, there’s still huge, glaring ways we fail to live up to that promise, still a huge amount of work to be done. But looking back at how far we’ve come, I really do believe we can make it.

But that’s not going to happen if the far right smothers democracy in its crib right now. And so that’s why I push back against people writing America off as an “empire”: because it could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I really don’t want to live in that world.

Exactly. America has done some truly horrific stuff in the not-so-distant past, and there’s no moral equivalency between the modern US and Russia. None. Both statements can be true at the same time.

1. Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and all the other territories can vote to apply for statehood or leave at any time they want. They stay territories because, as of the most recent referendums held in those places, the majority of the population are happy with the status quo. (From what I understand, they get tax breaks and exemptions from certain federal laws as territories which they’d have to give up as states. I don’t get it either, but it’s what they’ve chosen so far.)

2. Yes, we have military bases all over the world-- at the invitation of the host countries, which can kick us out any time they want to. They chose not to, not because they’re being puppeted by evil Amerikkka, but because they genuinely want the troops there-- much cheaper to have America pick up the tab for your nation’s defense than to have to build out your own armed forces yourself.

3. What do you mean by “infiltrate other countries with our corporate interest”? Multinational corporations running amok and exploiting vulnerable people for their own gain isn’t a uniquely American phenomenon, it’s a problem with corporations based in countries all over the world. And the current faction in charge of the US is at least trying to reign them in.

Google runs gmail, which like all email service providers is basically federated with all other email service providers. Hasn’t stopped smaller email providers from continuing to chug along just fine.

To be clear, though, that’s a best case scenario. It’s definitely possible Meta could try to warp the Fediverse so that it kills all instances other than their own. We’ll have to be vigilant and proactive to make sure that doesn’t happen here.

The EU really are the protectors of the free and open internet. Given the Republicans would kill any attempts to pass any regulations here in the States, we’re basically reliant on the EU to save us. So thanks, guys :)

I can say said labeling the current tyrannical regime with “Empire” is a misinterpretation.

My brother in Christ, your government is forcefully annexing territory into itself and making the conquered people culturally assimilate at threat of being tortured if they don’t comply. That’s literally the definition of imperialism.

America’s done some fucked up things in the last 20 years, don’t get me wrong, but absolutely nothing comes even close to the horrors of the genocidal war of imperial expansion Putin’s currently waging in Ukraine. There’s absolutely no moral equivalency between the modern US and Putin’s Russia.

Yeah, honestly, these NED guys seem really cool based on the wikipedia article. It’s nice to find out my tax dollars are actually supporting something positive every now and again :)

Not sure if I’m getting wooshed or not, but you should know the lemmy devs are tankies who deny the Uyghur genocide. Your money is better spent going to non-affiliated instance admins to keep their servers running.

Exactly. I have no issue using the lemmy software (lord knows the developers of most other major social media platforms I’ve used in the past have had some messed up political views). But there’s absolutely no way I’ll be donating a penny to them. Ernest and admins of other major lemmy instances, yes, but not the tankie devs.