Oh shit, blast from the past. Haven't heard this libertarian talking point in a while.
Every time someone gets a free beer, the libertarians point out that there is no such thing as free beer. Except that's not true: They don't mind free beer usually, it's almost always some social program that's "not free". Hey guess what: Everybody already knows that vaccines do not grow on trees. No need to explain this. Libertarians just hate social programs because they are selfish pricks rugged individuals.
in order to murder innocent civilians and commit countless war crimes
You think they do this "in order to murder innocent civilians"? Like this is the end goal? They just love murdering so much. And you base your political opinions on this genius analysis?
This will happen and marginalized groups like illegal immigrants, the homeless, and the disabled will be effectively excluded. Poor people are going to have their finances controlled even more. This will cause deaths.
You're just throwing those terms around aren't you?
You don’t understand what imperialism means. US/EU capital is looting and exploiting the former socialist block and controlling it through western capitalist media, NGOs, military bases and coups. That’s imperialism. The Russians preventing Nazis from doing ethnic cleansing along their border and demanding not to be threatened with a gun to the head is not imperialism.
And if you think Russia is fascist (I don't think it is, but reasonable people might disagree), what do you think about Ukraine? The Ukrainian state funds and arms Banderite groups and promotes Banderite ideology, which is a straight up fascist, racist, ethnonationalist, Neo-Nazi ideology. Those people think Russians are Mongol Asiatic Untermenschen, and the Ukrainian state promotes that. The Russian government does not promote this sort of ethnonationalism.
If Putin is such a Nazi, where's the ethnonationalism? You do know that Nazis believe in racial supremacy?
The regime in Kiev also jails and murders their opponents, and how is that relevant to whether Putin is a Nazi? The Nazis weren't the only ones who did that.
You're removing all meaning from the word Nazi if you call Putin one. He doesn't believe the same shit as the Nazis, and he hasn't done any crimes as heinous as the Nazis'.
Yes, the US cultivates influence groups that then, at the right time, take over real protests involving actual people with actual grievances, as a cover to carry out coups. They have done this many times. They do this because they want to loot and exploit countries for cheap labor and resources, and in this case, also to put a whole army in Russia's face.
Some questions about your explanation: He just wants to be dictator? Why? Who's backing him and why? Why would he be so stupid as to shoot at the protestors?
Have you ever seen that documentary about the failed coup to overthrow Chavez, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"? Private pro-coup TV channels told everybody the pro-Chavez protestors started shooting at the opposition, which was the mainstream narrative at the time. This was used as justification to oust him (temporarily). But the documentary filmmakers (which happened to be there filming at the time) show that it was snipers shooting at both pro- and anti-Chavez demonstrators.
Because what makes you think that if Russia didn’t get stuck in Ukraine they wouldn’t invade Georgia next? And then Moldova?
What makes me think that is that Russia has tried multiple times to solve the conflict in Donbas diplomatically, and that they didn't want to annex it in the Minsk agreements. Can you libs do anything but make inappropriate WW2 comparisons?
You do realize that the Ukrainian president does photo ops hugging Neo-Nazis, and that these guys are free to operate and have state backing? Ukraine even gave Russian Neo-Nazis a bunch of Bradleys and told them to attack into Russia proper. Ukrainians right now are living under a fascist regime, one that openly celebrated Nazi collaborating mass murderers.
I can already hear you say "those are not a majority". Well why does that matter if it's official state policy to promote, fund and arm those fuckers?
Obviously protestors have a reason for protesting and the CIA isn't handing out cash to random schmoes. They're just giving money to various groups that organize and support the protest, or they pay for positive media coverage. Groups they've been cultivating for decades. Groups that are coordinated by the US state department and will do basically what the US embassy tells them to do.
Again, imagine you had protests in Estonia, and the groups involved were long-time funded by Russia, and Russian officials made appearances at these protests to hand out cookies and shake hands, and Russian-funded media was riling up the protestors, and some of the people involved are straight up far-right fascists that hate your ethnic group. And then you hear a leaked phone call of Lavrov discussing who's going to be the new PM of Estonia, and a couple of weeks later, shooting starts (no one knows how exactly and nobody is too interested in finding out) and your old PM gets ousted without proper procedure, and the guy the Russians said they liked is in, and the far-right fascists also gets posts, and they hate you. WHAT WOULD YOU THINK?
The 5 billion was over like 30 years as foreign aid which is like pretty common for the US, there are like 50 other countries that also receive aid like this.
Well that's fine then I guess. The US "aids" pro-US political groups with billions of dollars everywhere! How nice.
All those politicians showed up after it happeded as I said.
There are pictures of them on the Maidan. Before the coup. News articles in the western press. What is this kindergarten? Do you have no object permanence?
I don't know where you're from, but I think you also "hate hate Russia with a passion" and it's clouding your judgement, because you live in some alternate reality if you believe all that.
There's an old clip of Nuland where she says the US spent 5 billion dollars promoting democracy in Ukraine. There's also the famous "Fuck the EU" clip of her deciding who's going to be PM before the coup even happened. Then there's her and lots of other western politicians on stage at the Maidan. McCain famously shook hands with a Nazi leader on there.
Can you imagine what you would say if all these things were done by Russia instead of the US?
The EU-commissioned report, by a fact-finding mission of more than 20 political, military, human rights and international law experts led by the Swiss diplomat, Heidi Tagliavini, was unveiled in Brussels today after nine months of work.
Flatly dismissing Saakashvili's version, the report said: "There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation ... Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive could not be substantiated ... It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack."
Oh shit, blast from the past. Haven't heard this libertarian talking point in a while.
Every time someone gets a free beer, the libertarians point out that there is no such thing as free beer. Except that's not true: They don't mind free beer usually, it's almost always some social program that's "not free". Hey guess what: Everybody already knows that vaccines do not grow on trees. No need to explain this. Libertarians just hate social programs because they are
selfish pricksrugged individuals.