291–300 of 585 posts
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A US company is free to cut off service to whatever foreigner it wants, just like a foreign country is free to ban whatever US firm it wants from operating in it.
The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner.
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I dunno if I agree with them being nuclear. It just ups the possibility of a thermonuclear war instead of a conventional war. Just as I’d prefer that IN or PK or both not having those weapons.
The only historical examples we have of nuclear war occurred when the capability was unilateral. MAD actually works. The fear you have of a thermonuclear war is a good thing, and that fear can exist in Putin as well... but only if Ukraine has the weapons to instill such fear. > Just as I’d prefer that IN or PK or both not having those weapons. The only reason we haven't seen a Ukraine-like invasion in that region is…
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> Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state. This is not an accurate comparison. It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them. Many of the Soviet soldiers manning them were Ukrainians and stayed behind. Much of the infrastructure for maintaining the Soviet arsenal was also in Ukrain…
> It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them. Russia is the single legal successor of the USSR, so all Soviet nukes became Russian nukes, regardless where they were located. So after the USSR broke up, Russia did have nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them.
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. This topic is divisive and the thread has quite a few comments on the wrong side of the line, but yours stands out as particularly bad, and you've been doing it in other threads as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813701 https://new…
It's the same hate that has killed Jewish Americans in the past year.
Many of these replies are very low on facts, very high on emotionally loaded subjective opinions.
It's a challenging task as BBC and so many more Western media outlets had to retract and amend their own faulty reporting over the last few months, but if we're talking about the spirit of the site, everyone should be held accountable equally.
Example at the top of this thread:
> Why is the president of the United States protecting a blood soaked war criminal?
https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46006941&goto=item%3Fi...
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> can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state. It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist? I can think of maybe two nations whose brand of nationalism does not relate to an ethnic group and I will probably push it for the USA. Israel is probably the only ethnoreligious nation, and the ethnic part is debatable if you ever seen Israelis, unlike the Palest…
> It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist? Most nationalism either is based around an established ancestry-derived ethnic identity (which is what “ethno-nationalism” usually refers to), or seeks to construct a new identity (which itself can be viewed as ethnic) transcending existing ethnic lines within the population of a state (the PRM regime in Mexico is an example of this); you migh…
I usually take it as another example of scapegoating Israel for universal concepts like war, which is a cultural tradition dating at least two millennia (scapegoating, not war)
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It’s kind of hard to see how much more support the US could withdraw from Ukraine, judging by the last article I read that gave Ukraine until Thursday to accept the latest peace deal negotiated between USA and Russia. If we are in the world you describe, EU might as well do as it wants - its downside has been capped.
Intelligence, targeting info and selling (no longer giving) weapons are all important support but sanctions is the really big one. The most recent round in particular has really bit into Russia's oil revenue. Of course it would be absolutely disgraceful for the US to drop sanctions on Russia and have normal relations with it while it continued its invasion. But that's what the US voted for.
The reason US sanctions Russia is because the US has been pushing its oil insustry in Europe. For instance, EU tariff deals included buying a minimum amount of hydrocarbon products:
> As part of this effort, the European Union intends to procure US liquified natural gas, oil, and nuclear energy products with an expected offtake valued at $750 billion through 2028.
In that context, US sanctions on Russia serve a purpose which isn't solely helping Ukraine ; I don't see the US lifting these sanctions anytime soon.
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I don't think that's true. Lots of countries out there led by thugs. It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing (not that it always succeeded, but it did its best). Looks like that time has passed.
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing The "The Hague Invasion Act", where the US authorizes itself to invade an ally (the Netherlands) to break war criminal suspects out of prison, was signed in 2002. The US has always been a "rules for thee but not for me" type of place and the digital sanction discussed here fits in a long line of be…
And they basically put it into writing, they're not the only country that would do something if an active duty military officer was arrested.
Here's a map. [1]
[1] https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/05/ICC-Mem...
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no, I am saying war is not genocide. And protecting your own civilians from very real death squads going on executing rampage is not "genocide" it's called war, which might be terrible but sometimes you can't evade
You're talking about Hamas, right? hamas are the ones who tried to fight back against death squads and are now suffering the consequences of that?
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Netanyahu frequently visits various European states. Putin went to Mongolia and back. All of these are signatories.
Frequently is false. Netanyahu only visited one European country after the ICC arrest order - it was Hungary because Orban explicitly managed he wouldn't be arrested. Also, if look at the exact plane movements of his visits, they specifically avoid the air space of countries that do take the ICC seriously. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_prime_mi... [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/netanyah…
Why is the president of the United States protecting a blood soaked war criminal? It’s weird. I mean what even does he get in return for this extraordinary service for someone so undeserving? I can’t even see how it’s valuable for him. Can someone explain it?
My understanding is that Christian extremists, who are voting for Trump, have some belief that some territories needs to be occupied by Jews so that something happens (I don't remember what, but I guess something good to them), so they are happy with the genocide and Trump is happy to collaborate with Israeli government to make his electors happy.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical...
> One main strand of evangelical theology holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return.
> Hagee, despite having a long history of antisemitism – he has suggested Jews brought persecution upon themselves by upsetting God and called Hitler a “half-breed Jew” – founded Christians United for Israel in 2006.
