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by microtonal 596 days ago
This is a false narrative that Putin propagates all the time (besides that Ukraine is run by nazis) and is not supported by history. He did attack Georgia and Chechnya. There was no danger at all of these countries joining NATO anytime soon.

At any rate, it has been a severe miscalculation on Putin's part. He thought they could take Ukraine in days and the aggression led Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
1 comments
hackinthebochs 596 days ago
>This is a false narrative that Putin propagates all the time

It turns out that bad people do speak the truth sometimes, at least when the truth is in their corner:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1ghs32...

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kelnos 596 days ago
That "truth" is speculative fiction. Nothing more than unsubstantiated conspiracy-theory nonsense.
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hackinthebochs 596 days ago
It's weird to see people say stuff like this. Like, are you completely ignorant of the history of US initiated regime change around the world? Do you not find it at all plausible? The US has a very long history of doing this very sort of thing[1]. Do you think the three letter agencies have just been sitting on their hands in recent decades? I just don't get how people can engage in such willful ignorance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

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kelnos 596 days ago
I can simultaneously find something plausible and see that there's historical precedent for it, but not accept unsubstantiated fantasy stories made up on the internet.
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aguaviva 595 days ago
The reasoning you're expressing here is basically: "Heck it's plausible, right? Therefore it might as well have happened. There's no need to actually substantiate that it did. It suffices to just have a gut feeling that it happened."

Nevermind the Jeffrey Sachs interview that no one has time to watch. His take has been debunked elsewhere. What matters here is your own reasoning here, which is incredibly specious. If you can't see the obvious flaw in the argument that you laid down, then I don't know what to tell you.

BTW, here's another helpful suggestion: If you're on your favorite website some day, looking for answers to what's going in the world, and you see the top-posted comment for some article or interview that you thought really rocked is some obviously useless, snarky drivel like the following (taken from the Reddit link you posted):

  Putin just woke up one day, stumbled his toe or something, and decided to invade Ukraine.
Then that should perhaps suggest to you that, far from being your friend, that website, and the articles and videos that get top-posted to it, are probably kinda dodgy. And that maybe you should taking the content you find there with a heaping portion of salt. And that you might want to try fact-checking the content and arguments you find there, instead simply believing it all outright. Or better yet, just stop wasting your time on that website altogether.

Like, are you completely ignorant of the history of US initiated regime change around the world?

I know all about it, and can probably cite dozens of instances off the top of my head. But none of that history translates to evidence that US-initiated regime change actually happened in a given country X, in year Y. It's just innuendo, nothing more.

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hackinthebochs 595 days ago
That's a lot of words just to say nothing of substance. If you want to make a substantive point--feel free. But I have no interest in engaging with this kind of mindless slop. And regarding the subreddit, if you don't know anything about it, you shouldn't draw any conclusions from the snarky comments you happen to see.
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aguaviva 595 days ago
It's not just that one comment - it's nearly every comment. The fact that that nearly every thread on that subreddit is basically a giant echo chamber should also be telling you something.

Criticisms of Sachs's take are easy to find, and quite devastating. Whether you care to look into the matter is up to you.

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