• plyth@feddit.org
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    23 hours ago

    The elephant in the room are the military expenses to protect against Russia.

    The open question is if 5% are necessary or if 2% would have been enough.

    • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
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      5 hours ago

      The elephant in the room are the military expenses to protect against Russia.

      Probably shouldn’t have been invading Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere, and shouldn’t have been pushing for war with Russia all these decades, then.

    • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      17 hours ago

      Nobody can trust Russia. Assholes downed a civil aeroplane and refuse to take responsibility. Also they occupied a lot of Europe and Russified it as much as they tried.

      I think that the expenses must be paid from billionnaires’ wallets, and those billionnaires must not be able to trickle the expenses down, also not being able to flee.

      • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
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        5 hours ago

        Nobody can trust Russia.

        You are implying that somebody can trust the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan.

        Also, most of the world very much does seem to be able to trust Russia just fine.

          • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
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            4 hours ago

            Incorrect. Most of Eurasia is fine with Russia, including most of its neighbours.

            You must be thinking of the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan as not trusting Russia.

            Also, it is telling that you recognise that the vast majority of the countries that share planet with said invaders do not trust them. Must have something to do with the constant invasions and other atrocities.

            • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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              40 minutes ago

              The US is untrustworthy. Russia is also untrustworthy.

              Actually, I’ll keep going (nonexhaustively and in no particular order):

              Germany, the UK, Iran, China, France, Qatar, Canada, both Koreas, obviously Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Brazil, UAE, Sweden, Denmark, Morocco, and Japan are all untrustworthy.

              (Please note that I’m not suggesting people from these countries cannot be trusted, but the countries themselves, meaning people acting on behalf of these countries and the governments themselves)

      • plyth@feddit.org
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        15 hours ago

        they occupied a lot of Europe and Russified it as much as they tried.

        That was the USSR, led by a Georgian. The Russians can be blamed for much but I think they were resettled in the USSR much like any other ethnic group.

        • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
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          5 hours ago

          If you want to claim that the USSR liberating Europe from the original nazis and stopping the Lebensraum and the Holocaust was “occupation”, you have to also concede that those parts of Europe are currently occupied by NATO.

          • jimmy90@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            occupied by NATO

            ahhahahahahahahaaaaa

            was that the NATO invasion of 1989 when the cluster fuck of the USSR finally imploded and the NATO troops invaded and installed puppet governments

            i mean there really is no point talking to ml’s

            • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
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              2 hours ago

              Really not sure what you could disagree with in my comment in good faith.

              Considering that those governments are now puppet governments of the US, it does seem fair to talk about occupation, given that you consider the USSR’s liberation of that part of Europe from the original nazis to be ‘occupation’.

              Also, if you want to talk about how people ‘democratically’ chose to join the most prolific invader in the world (, you do have to admit that they should bear responsibility for invasions of Iran, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and many other places.

              • sus@programming.dev
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                1 hour ago

                It’s a real mystery how the CIA managed to brainwash all the east european warsaw pact countries into hating the USSR while all of their media was still under the control of the proletariat.

                • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
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                  58 minutes ago

                  That’s a rather silly claim, considering that plenty of people’s lives did get worse after the undemocratic dismantlement of the USSR (which most of these supposed USSR-haters voted against), and the rest are now beneficiaries of things like invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

                  It’s not really surprising that people who join gangs of robbers, murderers and torturers hate not being beneficiaries of such and will claim that they were oppressed even when their living standards were demonstrably some of the best in the world.

                  Also, you do understand that the USSR was one of the most significant forces behind the decolonization of Africa and Asia, and that it helped liberation movements there, right? And you do understand what that means with regards to what sort of people would hate it, don’t you?

                  • sus@programming.dev
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                    44 minutes ago

                    Sure, the march 1991 referendum supported preserving the USSR, but by that time Poland, Hungary and the baltics had already seceded, and Ukraine had a referendum with an opposite result 9 months later.

                • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
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                  4 hours ago

                  You are either claiming that the USSR’s liberation of Europe both was and wasn’t occupation, or you are claiming that the USSR preventing fascists from coming into power on those countries was ‘occupation’, while the US putting fascists into power there and also doing things like what has been done to Greece and Ukraine is somehow not such.

                  • plyth@feddit.org
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                    4 hours ago

                    I didn’t say anything about that because it doesn’t matter for the Russians. No matter if the USSR was good or bad, that Russification is not proof that Russians want to russify their neighbors.

    • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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      22 hours ago

      Also, as there’s no standardized way to count these, Finland with mandatory conscription has a crapload of expenses which aren’t included in miltary expenses. In current global situation I don’t think increasing expenses was a wrong call and it’s not purely black and white, there’s also at least some jobs to finns trough the investments, but I’d say that our money would’ve been better spent to something else than US and Israel tech as (specially USA) has not been really reliable partner.

      But also the reality is that even without those expenses our budget has been negative for quite a while, so something had to be done. I’m not saying that current government had the best actions, and they have objectively made things worse on some places, but just waiting for a miracle wouldn’t have worked either. But that’s a whole another discussion.