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US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

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Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#371

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But that's basically true right now. The Democrats aren't getting anything done without the approval of Manchin and Sinema and still wouldn't post-2022. In 2014, the Republicans held 54 Senate seats after the election. In the very worst case for 2022, we're back to 2014. However, if you actually go look at the upcoming races for this year, it seems much more likely that we'll end up closer to a 50/50 split given how…

Yeah. I have no idea why Biden tried to govern as if he had a strong majority when he had a 50/50 Senate. He's from the Senate himself; he absolutely should have known how weak his hand was. He could have done some things with it anyway, but by playing it as if he had more than he does, he got shot down time after time, and wound up looking quite ineffective.

> Yeah. I have no idea why Biden tried to govern as if he had a strong majority when he had a 50/50 Senate.

There's no other way to govern. You govern like you can lead and Congress either does or doesn't follow, or you are an irrelevance. Biden got more of his agenda accomplished than he would have with any less aggressive approach.

> he got shot down time after time, and wound up looking quite ineffective.

Doing nothing risky let's you look ineffective without getting shot down, but it doesn't actually make you look effective. And if you get shot down—especially on something publicly popular—that’s a campaign issue. If you don't try, it's...nothing.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#372

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It's amazing how many people just can't seem to see any reason for Russia's behavior other than making their leader into a cartoon who just wants to do evil things to be evil. Honestly, since the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO has only expanded and crept closer and closer to Russia. How are they supposed to feel? As for this particular thing - the areas they are want are mainly Russian anyways and recent Ukrainian pol'…

Boris Yeltsin wanted it to be a long-term goal of Russia to join NATO - a measure supported by the United States (source: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/world/soviet-disarray-yel... or https://archive.ph/31hkF ) And they started down that road earnestly in the 1990s. But it required extensive military and certain Democratic reforms Russia didn't want to commit to so they abandoned it. And that's totally fine: nob…

And then America interfered in their elections in the 90’s and trust began to erode. We literally sent agents there to install American style politics to get Boris re-elected. It’s no wonder they don’t trust anything!

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#373

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I think it was strategic to end the war quickly. They knew if they invaded the East it would be a drawn out thing. So they went for the head shot right away and hoped they could pressure a negotiation. But to their credit, Ukraine stood up to it and the Russian execution of their plan was poor. So they've since abandoned that strategy and have now settled for plan-b, which they will win eventually. It's time to stop…

You think the strategy was to take Kyiv(the cradle and former capital of Kievlyan Russia)and then exchange it for war-torn Donbas? That would be like Israelis exchanging Jerusalem for Gaza

Not take but threaten. And yes, Russia wants the buffer zone.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#374

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> Just like we were forced to mass murder Chechens Just like the US "was forced" to mass murder Iraqis because, in addition to fake WMD claims, the US intelligence was linking Saddam to Bin Laden. I wonder how exactly you would characterise Khattab, among other "prominent" "freedom fighters", and his role in the Chechen wars. Would you be willing to accommodate similar kind of characters in your country of origin and…

Most people in the USA agree that the Iraq war was a senseless tragedy fought on false pretenses, and a gross violation of international law. Iraq posed no threat to the USA, the USA had no good reason to invade, and the outcomes of the war were tremendously destructive and destabilizing. If it were up to me, the perpetrators would be locked up. If nothing else, the Iraq war led to a sharp political change in the USA…

> most likely a false flag operation

you are deflecting from the question:

> Would you be willing to accommodate similar kind of characters in your country of origin

Khattab and his friends like Basayev and other "freedom fighters" have a long and undisputed history of butchering civilians that they were proud of. Taking a maternity ward hostage, or beheading western communication engineers, or, say, stuffing an elementary school with explosives and taking the kids hostage, and many other similar things were done in broad daylight with these lunatics officially bragging about killing civilians. But you've conveniently swept it under the rug. Well, here is the answer: if a group like that operated in the US, they would have been shot like rabid dogs at all cost, very quickly.

> Iraq war led to a sharp political change in the USA

What change? US continued to have troops on the ground in those countries for decades, culminating with the rise of ISIS in Iraq _on Obama's watch_, no less. Matter of fact, there are still several thousand US troops in Iraq _and_ Syria, doing God knows what there, on my dime.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#375
post #183

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> Appeasement would be a better choice? Pope Francis says Ukraine war was ‘perhaps somehow provoked’ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/14/pope-francis-u... "The pontiff warned [..] against what he said was a fairytale perception of the conflict as good versus evil" "We need to move away from the usual Little Red Riding Hood pattern, in that Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad one [..] so…

Well that’s a new one, is there an interpretation of red riding hood where the wolf is good?

Tanith Lee, "Wolfland" - "Little Red Riding Hood gets turned on its head. The wolf is frightening, but it's not the villian in this tale."

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Blood-Tales-Sisters-Grimmer/dp/08...

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#376
post #207

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There's already NATO bases in the Barents Sea (and Turkey via the Black Sea) in addition along their land borders via the baltic states (minus Belarus). Their actions have also pushed Finland and Sweden into the arms of NATO. The thing about the Cuban missile crisis is that Kennedy was able to get Russian missiles AWAY from the United States. Russia's actions are getting hardware placed closer. And why is that? Proba…

>The thing about the Cuban missile crisis is that Kennedy was able to get Russian missiles AWAY from the United States. It only happened in the first place because the US put missiles in Turkey. Take them away and suddenly the soviet union is ok with removing the cuban nukes. In this case a simple "Ukraine wont be joining NATO" would have prevented this war. >Russia's actions are getting hardware placed closer. The s…

> In this case a simple "Ukraine wont be joining NATO" would have prevented this war.

Given the myriad of non-NATO excuses, including outright restoration of Russian imperial territory, that have been cited by Putin since day one, if you pay attention to anything besides the message crafted by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Western audiences (and faithfully relayed by Russia’s useful idiots in the West), and Russia pattern of aggression against it's neighbors, that doesn't really seem likely.

(It's more likely that simply letting Ukraine skip ahead straight to joining NATO would have stopped the war.)

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#377
post #342

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> The breakdown in diplomacy with Russia is the worst part. The previous administration at least had diplomacy. The current one just pushed them into this. If by diplomacy you mean kowtowing to everything Russia does, I'm not sure that's much better.

>If by diplomacy you mean kowtowing to everything Russia does, I'm not sure that's much better. Trump and Stoltenberg argue on camera ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k >). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?

As time goes on and the current popular media fades into obscurity, Trump will be held in higher and higher regard. His prediction about the current admin - high fuel, high inflations, crashing markets - was 100% spot on.

But he didn’t have the decorum.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#378
post #199

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>"Continue doing business as usual as if they're not murdering women and children?" No we should do everything possible to stop it. There is a problem though - when "murdering women and children" is done by approved country "Continue doing business as usual" is pretty much what the West does. And I am not aware of any real repercussions for the crimes committed.

You have to pick your battles and fact is, the American public wants to stop Russian atrocities in Ukraine. They don't want to do anything about Yemen or Syria. I'm sure many books have been written about how and why people get involved to help strangers.

>"They don't want to do anything about Yemen or Syria."

"They" were fine with their own government killing hundreds of thousands in Iraq and whole bunch of other countries. They're fine with their government threatening ICC as organization and its members. They've definitely picked their battle and frankly I think by doing all those things without any repercussion they are being hypocrites and setting example to other countries. No high moral ground here. The whole world affairs are quite disgusting for that matter.

Personally I just try to think about nice things that humanity still manage to produce and as I am a creative person my brain is always busy with rather more inspiring matters.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#379
post #126

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Funniest part is that US and Europe buy Russian oil from India. Because Indians are able to remove all evil totalitarian molecules from it.

"India has also denied recent reports that Russian crude imported by India was being shipped on as refined products to other countries, including the US." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60783874.amp Even if it is true the oil shipments origins are being hidden so the US and Europe don't know it's from Russia. You implied they were aware it was from Russia but were ok because it went through. Article about…

> India has also denied recent reports that Russian crude imported by India was being shipped on as refined products to other countries

Which makes zero sense. I'll also note that there is no citation. India is one of the largest exporters of refined petroleum products in the world. If the refineries ramp up purchase of Urals crude, guess what ends up in exports?

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#380
post #126

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And Europe isn’t buying Russian oil? You have NATO members still on Russian energy. Why bother about other countries?

Funniest part is that US and Europe buy Russian oil from India. Because Indians are able to remove all evil totalitarian molecules from it.

> Because Indians are able to remove all evil totalitarian molecules from it.

The cleansing waters of the Ganges wash all sins away.

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