https://nitter.net/codepink/status/1709591940675637312#m
https://www.codepink.org/arrested_11_activists_arrested_at_bernie_sanders_sit_in_for_peace
Solidarity to CodePink getting the message for diplomacy instead of endless money/arms heaping in the war as always. Can't habeeb Bernie went from resisting with his full body weight between two cops in his youth, to dolling out zip-ties like friendship bracelets. 
You’re right. We should give up any and all demands for the sake of forming alliances. Having beliefs is for losers. If we completely capitulate and start supporting capitalism, we can even form an alliance with everyone in DC!
And that belief is pacifism? That's of course a legitimate opinion to hold. But mine is different. The US has committed their fair share of atrocities over the decades. But I live in Germany. And if it weren't for the US involvment in WW2, I might be living in a fascist shithole today. So... is that comparable to the situation in Ukraine? Imo it is to a certain degree. Is war horrible? Of course, we should never fight them. But if someone wages war, ignoring all means of diplomacy because they think they'll profit from it, and your only option to end the war immediately is surrendering to maximalist demands.. with the expectation that this will again continue in some years with new demands... What you gonna do?
Correction, if it wasn't for Soviet involvement, the Germans smashed their military capacity against the Red Army, not the Americans who were lucky to break out of Normandy thanks to the Reds holding down and destroying millions of German soldiers, you Germans love to misread your own history
There's a comparison in that there are nazis in Ukraine who want to cleanse the Donbass and Crimea of Russian speakers, of course that basic fact about this nine year old conflict undermines the propaganda peddled by the same con artists who claimed Saddam had nukes
But again, Euros like you love misreading history so all this probably flew over your head
Good god. How nice of you to clear me up about the history of my own country hahaha. I'm sure the invasion in Normandy was basically a stroll in the park for the Americans. And the Eastern Germans they were so glad about their "liberation" that the Soviet govt had to build a wall to keep people from running away from this GLORIOUS "democratic" state. Even shot people who wanted to exercise their right to leave.
But lets leave it at that. There's no sense in discussing with someone who thinks they are all-knowing keepers of the truth without even knowing the definition of doubt.
For someone who's German, you seem to be unaware of the basic fact that the East and West German border was well outside Berlin, and that the Berlin Wall was a physical border encircling West Berlin, given West Berlin was part of a hostile nation at the time.
Hard borders exist between nations. Try running the border between Pakistan and India and you'll also get shot, because surprise surprise, when there's tension between nations, there tends to be increased tension at the border, too.
Fucking braindead.
oh look, a german doing soft nazi apologia.
how unsurprising.
That's what I came here for. I like the hexbear shitposting attitude :D
Just today I took the rare opportunity to dive into your echo chamber and have some debates. I hope y'all are not too triggered now. Don't take all the things I said too seriously. In the end I'm not 100% sure what the best course of action regarding Ukraine would be. But you certainly are, so having such discussions in a nuanced way really becomes difficult. Enjoyed it nevertheless so far.
if you're going to give us your fake unbothered attitude then please go back to reddit. it's unhealthy to pretend to have ironic detachment from your worldview, as if this is actually a fun debate, while actually feeling troubled and challenged by people who don't conform to the liberal worldview. you're trying to assert - and we see through - that you imagine us to be some uncontacted tribe which you are visiting as a redditor missionary or anthropologist, writing "hmm, a fascinating shitposting attitude in this society! I shall report this to the civilized internet!" in your journal, thus automatically placing any and all of our views in the "uncivilized" category for automatic discarding.
having this detachment feels much psychologically safer than having concrete, heartfelt beliefs that you have to defend, but leaves you confused, miserable, and directionless about the world and how to solve problems. I know this because I was in your position once upon a time when I was a young liberal. you are, in three words, "totally not owned."; in another three, "actually having fun." I have another three words for you.
you're still doing "triggered" stuff? my god. I'll help you fix your time machine so you can go back to 2016
The Germans are not OK
I'm not detached from my worldview. But if holding a belief means I have to view everything that happens through the same lens, and not being able to appreciate multiple perspectives on an issue, then yes, I'd rather not hold a belief but decide from case to case. If that means to you that I'm detached then I can't help it.
Being able to enjoy an argument doesn't imply that I don't take it seriously. Feeling troubled and challenged by people who don't conform to a world view... That could surely be said about the reactions of many here, why should I be an exception?
I don't sort most views here in my "uncivilized" folder and I couldn't care less to "report" that to anyone, as I'm not aligning with any particular community and am not interested in making fun of others when I can be sure that I will get nice slaps on the back for. You surely do enough for the "uncontacted tribe" image yourselves when I remember the (funny) posts about the panic of some people in other communities after federation. Plesse don't imply that I invented this shit or that it's now suddenly some offensive perspective.
You could, I don't know, actually argue with the points you disagree with and articulate the rationale you used to arrive at your conclusions instead of doing this whole "oh ho ho you actually believe a thing I disagree with how fascinating" shtick.
lmao, how far up your own ass are you? You really think this sanctimonious drivel is the appropriate way to respond to anything anyone here has told you?
This isn't reddit motherfucker, keep that debate bro bullshit outta here
If it was an echo chamber you wouldn't be allowed to come in here and get smacked around for our amusement. Now finish your homework, it's almost bed time.
140 people in total were killed trying to cross from East to West Germany. Not 140 million. Not 140 thousand. 140, over a 30 year period. 4-5 people per year. Obama's drone strikes killed at least 3800 people, a tenth of which were civilians even under Obama's maximalist definition, over 8 years. Which historical events do people mention more when searching for evidence of brutality by governments - Obama's drone strikes, or the Berlin Wall? Thousands die in the Mediterranean Sea trying to cross it. Israel's crimes in Palestine dwarf the crimes of the Berlin Wall. Why are European governments not derided as authoritarian hellscapes like the GDR was? Why is Israel not a pariah state for their totalitarianism?
I know about these opinions, especially since I'm living in the East. Also I genuinely respect them. But of course there are reasons for this: The people who wouldn't voice that opinion have been long gone. Either fled before 89 or moved to Western Germany in the years after, as millions of young Eastern Germans have done. And those who stayed were most likely those living on the countryside where influence of the government was smaller and the oppression less notable. But of course the GDR was not hell on earth and some people had the chance to enjoy life every now and then.
Still... Even if not many were shot: Many more were interrogated and tortured in Stasi jail. And knowing that anyone, even your closest relatives, could be spying on you... Just because you didn't conform to the reason of state. That must've been horrible. It's not like people fled the country without reason.
Eagerly awaiting your essay discussing the authoritarian and orwellian treatment that communists received from the United States government.
Ever wonder why it took Americans until 1944 to land in France?
To be marginally fair to Roosevelt, he was swayed by Churchill's proposal to go for Sicily first to stop the Soviets potentially taking all of Eastern Europe.
To also be "fair" to Roosevelt, he said this:
Instead of lashing out at me for informing you about basic facts maybe you should brush up on your history
Or you could continue glorifying your own ignorance and regurgitating pop culture propaganda you picked up as a child
Don't be mad that I'm lashing out a bit. At least you're saying clearly that I'm just falling for propaganda, not being able to think critically in your opinion. But I could say the exact same thing about you. Imo it's ignorance to lecture someone about the history of their own country as if that person had never informed themselves or reflected on that history. I didn't want to diminish the role of the Red Army in defeating the nazis, of course they had insane losses and contributed significantly to the victory over nazism. However I don't think that the Americans taking part in it did only play a minor part. Both sides working together was necessary to achieve this. And I don't think it makes any sense to argue about who contributed the most. Also completely besides the point because my argument was about pacifism. And neither the Russians nor the Americans defeated the nazis without weapons.
As an American, I can tell you most Americans need a decades worth of lectures on our own history because we are thoroughly propagandized to believe anything but.
Unless it's a North Korean or Chinese citizen speaking positively about their own country, then you can lecture them about their own country's history
Germans don't get to talk about their own WW2 history with any authority, you get to sit down and listen because it was your grandparents that fucked up and it was them that were re-installed back into power and it was them that determined your cultural and educational upbringing. You are the least qualified people on Earth to talk about fascism or German history with any arrogance. You should feel a lot more shame, and do a lot more listening to the communists.
quick q, who do you think was responsible for the Nordstream attack?
I assume you could agree that Americas invasion of Iraq was unjustified and illegal, yes? Now ask yourself if China had heralded Saddam Hussein as a heroic oppositional figure determined to fight to the last man and provided him with an endless supply of modern weaponry and more loans than his country could repay in generations, would you have supported it? Would it have altered the outcome aside from leading to millions more dead?
I agree that the invasion of Iraq was illegal and unjustified just as the invasion of Ukraine was, and it set a terrible precedent. If China would've been in the position to credibly fend off the invasion at that time (before it even started!) that would've been a great thing. Now I would say the same about Ukraine but the West didn't take the threat seriously enough back then.
A difference in outcome is imo that Iraq was a dictatorship to start with. When I talk to Ukrainian refugees now living here they tell me that they want to preserve the political freedoms they gained after the Maidan revolution. They don't want to become a puppet state similar to Belarus and many of them are determined to fight for that. Ukraine surely is far from a perfect democracy and it has it's share of nazis as all societies have. But who am I to tell the Ukrainians to just let it be, accept their defeat and flee while they still can? But the war is a terrible meat grinder and it should ne stopped ASAP. I wish for honest negotiations and that might even include some tough to swallow compromises for the Ukrainian side. But what's more important is that there needs to be a new security architecture that prevents future wars and works for all sides. The Ukrainians have been let down by all sides in the past as neither country from the West, nor Russia, who all guaranteed Ukraines security in treatys have met their obligations.
What 'political freedoms' did they gain? Specifically what freedoms did those of the Donbass gain? The right to no longer teach their native language? The right to be burned in their trade house? The right to be have artillery lobbed at their houses?
Belarus is not a 'puppet' state, it has more dictation around it's own policies than Ukraine does post-Maidan, and isn't actively selling all of it's assets to Russian corporations. Just because the Ukrainians you talk to are politically illiterate and filled with Western propoganda doesn't mean they are correct. Ukraine lost political freedom after Maidan because the game was specifically playing Russia off of the West for the benefit of the Ukrainian political elite. Post-Maidan it was still playing Russian interests off of Western interests, but now actively ignoring Russian redline policy and basic ethnic constitutional rights, a recipe for disaster and constant civil war. With the full-scale war now, it is totally capitulated towards Western demands, literally killing their own people in insane suicide drives, and selling off all fungible assets to the West.
Now, none of this was for the 'good of the Ukrainian people', either pre or post-Maidan, the game was always for the benefit of a small number of Ukrainians, but I don't see that changing anytime soon, and in fact, continuing to get worse, particularly as Ukriane continues to adopt privatization policies (policies first used to describe literal german Nazi policies) throughout their country. Liberal Ukrainians will not recognize the country they return to.
If we're already in illusionary politics land, here's my take on Donbass and Crimea. I don't care about their independence referendums. There's even a secessionist movement in Bavaria, demanding independence from Germany. Doesn't mean that any prick who thinks they deserve their own country should get one. How did the russians even end up there, if not by imperalist soviet policies which btw led to the deportation and death of millions who lived there before, e.g. Crimean Tatars. So Crimea belongs to the Tatars, right? Or no: Lets go back further. It belongs to the Greek who settled there before the Tatars! It's not like the Russians in Ukraine are some fucking indigenuous tribe whose customs and rituals deserve to be world heritage. While they should be treated with the same dignity as all citizens of Ukraine it's not like having a common language for teaching has anything to do with violating "ethnic constitutional rights".
In the end, the big majority of people in the Donbass would probably have preferred not to be occupied by unmarked troops sneaking into their homeland and afterwards being governed by idiotic strongmen who draft them for a war they never wanted.
And yet I guarantee you were full in on the Free Hong Kong bullshit a few years ago lmao, fuck outta here.
Enjoy paying through the nose for heat this winter, you propagandized fool.
They ended up there because they fought and died against the fucking Nazis you historically illiterate ingrate. They migrated there after the Nazis had killed millions of Ukrainians, people who fought against the very Nazis and Banderite fascists that Ukriane now celebrates as 'national heros'. 'Imperialist soviet policy', Ukriane was the breadbasket of the USSR, a technological powerhouse where the prime computer and cultural development of the USSR occured. An opportunity wasted by their corrupt political elite, a different elite than what is in charge now. Some fucking imperialism that is.
It literally is, oblasts have had long-standing right to teach their native languages, a right that was violated by the government almost immediately post Maidan, regardless of heritage or not. I would rather have had them be independent republics, but the likelihood of that is impossible under modern sovereign state politics.
You haven't watched a single piece of documentary on the post-Maidan Donbass, or even Ukrainian history at all, you don't know anything about what you are talking about.
It is exactly as Zhukov said, we liberate them and the shittiest among them will hate us for it.
What even is the point you're trying to make here? All independence movements are the same? That if there is a different independence movement that you don't support in completely different circumstances then that means not supporting autonomy for people in the Donbass is reasonable because you are able to draw a thin veneer of logical consistency through completely superficial comparisons?
If your national government gets undemocratically overthrown in a coup and then starts implementing policies to strip away rights in your region of the country based on removing your ability to participate in public life and suppressing access to political representation and economic/social participation with tactics such as making it unnecessarily difficult to participate in society using your native language, then that seems like fantastic justification to want independence and autonomy. Why would you need to draw comparisons to other secessionist movements based on little more than the superficial similarity that it is also a secessionist movement?
Oh, it's because your actual argument is that the people being affected are acceptable targets for racial/ethnic discrimination, and that they deserve to be relegated to their appropriate status as second class citizens without meaningful political representation, or better yet expelled from their homes so that the pure and righteous Ukrainian nationalists can reclaim their nation. But that's a less palatable argument, so you had to preface it with some bullshit before you slid that in there.
Ukrainians didn't gain political freedoms after the coup, a third of the country which are Russian speakers literally lost political freedoms, hence the overwhelming Crimean vote for independence and the beginning of the Civil War in Donbass, whoever you're "talking" to is a fascist who's fully comfortable cleansing Ukraine of Russian speakers or they're delusional liberals who've closed their eyes and ears for the last nine years
And who are you to tell the people of Donbass and Crimea they should lay down their arms and accept whatever fate Ukrainian nazis have in store for them?
love it when someone pulls out their "spoke to refugee" card as if it means anything by itself. I have also spoken with refugees including a man who barely managed to escape from Azov controlled Mariupol early in the war and had many choice words about the current regime and the far-right groups in the military. Curious how refugees with his perspective on Ukraine and the war is never elevated in the west, but we do find time to applaud an SS member on a Ukraine propaganda tour.
Perhaps a federal structure that maintains Ukranian sovereignty while ensuring Ukranian states have sufficient autonomy to make decisions about things like what languages are taught?
As in, what was proposed in the Minsk agreements. And yet:
Thank the Russians, not the Americans. It was American money that helped install Hitler by the way, and the Nazis were directly inspired by American "manifest destiny" (ie land theft and genocide) to do their Eastward cleansing. You are victim of propaganda that has completely re-written history