The Cuban government has sent thousands of Cubans to fight for the russians.

https://kyivindependent.com/exclusive-1-076-cubans-identified-fighting-for-russia-ukraine-says-96-dead-or-disappeared/

The Cuban foreign ministry didn’t deny their presence, they claim they have nothing to do with this (which is clearly bullshit, Cuba is an island and average salaries are way too low to get an international passport).

Considering the above, why shouldn’t Ukraine treat Cuba as an enemy state (like North Korea)?

That’s why I said your original point is misleading, there are legitimate reasons for Ukraine to support sanctions against an enemy state.

My would you require strong pressure to diplomatically oppose a country that is directly aiding an genocidal imperialist invader (why also pretending to oppose imperialism)?

What is your logic here?

If anything it makes perfect sense to support sanctions against your enemy (i.e. Cuba).

The framing of Ukraine yielding to “strong pressure” is somewhat misleading.

Thousands of Cubans are taking part in the invasion of Ukraine. The Cuban government claims they have nothing to do with it, but there are legitimate reasons to believe that they are lying.

Russia didn’t escape anything. The breakup of the USSR started due to pressure from occupied countries that were forced to be part of the USSR. In under 10 years, they were back to supporting a KGB dictatorship. 2000 and 2004 victories by putin are generally considered to be legitimate and analysis of subsequent elections do not show falsification/pressure as being a matter for going above 50% support.

But I digress. I would argue even when I was living in the US (Bush II, Obama), there were clear early seeds of support for a “managed democracy” approach. The one that came to mind immediately was lack of voting franchise in Washington DC and another one that I later figured out was regional geographic disenfranchisement.

But I do agree that American polemics about freedom are unconvincing and only serve to enable limitation of freedom.

While I am pretty skeptical of US-style polemics on free speech, I of course support free expression, strong journalistic culture, limiting the influence of oligarch propaganda and significant safeguards to censorship.

That being said there are clear externalities to easy access to digital content distribution platforms that prioritize engagement above all else and do not bear responsibility for their actions.

I of course would never trust the CCP on this, but I think in the long term the externalities inherent to social media distribution will have to be accounted for.

When I was living in the US (this was a while ago), I often got the impression that there were a lot of subtle but important similarities to russia (happened to have lived there for some time too, we left as soon we had the option to, this was before they invaded Georgia). The superpower exceptionalism, the fake-religiousity, the support for corruption among the plebs.

That being said I have always been pro-America in a pragmatic, “we deal with what we have” sense.

But the US really is becoming like russia. Putin didn’t just appear out of nowhere, it was very much with the support of russian society and russian genocidal imperialism was a thing under Yeltsin too.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures — a climate investment firm Gates founded — has bankrolled several nuclear startups, including fusion pioneer Commonwealth Fusion Systems

What exactly has CFS pioneered? I am genuinely curious.

Their wikipedia page states that they have yet to demonstrate net power generation (via fusion reactor) with the current target date set for 2027.

Their SPARC concept seems to be based on the ARC concept which is described as having the following key benefit:

The key technical innovation is to use high-temperature superconducting magnets in place of ITER’s low-temperature superconducting magnets. The proposed device would be about half the diameter of the ITER reactor and cheaper to build.

The sentence cites an article titled “Advances in magnet technology could bring cheaper, modular fusion reactors from sci-fi to sci-reality in less than a decade” from August 2015. Less than a decade indeed.

Gate goes on to say the following:

A growing number of big tech companies from Microsoft to Alphabet Inc.’s Google have inked power purchase agreements with nuclear startups [e.g. CFS] to secure future electricity supply. But Gates says there is still a long way off for those startups to deliver electricity at scale.

“Nuclear as a whole won’t be a gigantic contributor to data center electricity until 2035, and that’s assuming everything goes well,” he said.

I honestly don’t understand what the article is trying to say (both explicitly and implicitly). Gates believes that we need to invest more into fusion and fission to compete with china [and change our attitudes to nuclear power]?

I say all of this as someone who is generally supportive of nuclear power (I live in Ukraine, if not for our nuclear power plants, things would be far far worse with our electricity situation).

That’s why the term “committed support [for russian genocidal imperialism]” is arguably a much better characterization of Lula’s views than “turning a blind eye”.

What I read also concerned other regions, not only Crimea.

I will give Lula the benefit of the doubt (I am assuming he knows nothing about russia or Ukraine), but yes, you can kick the russians out of Crimea (under putin or otherwise). If you want to do it, one easy supportive action would have been to allow high impact strikes deep into russian territory from day one of the full scale invasion.

Or not reward them with Nord Stream II after they annexed Crimea in 2014 (Merkel).

Generally speaking, being meek, cowardly and corrupt rarely contributes to any goals (military or otherwise).

I believe Lula da Silva publicly supported the annexation of currently occupied territories. It was presented in a more diplomatic manner, but I am talking about outcomes.

Brazil hasn’t legally recognized the occupation like Nicaragua, but from what I’ve read in our local (Ukrainian) media, it’s more like committed support, as opposed to “turning a blind eye”.

I believe Brazil basically supports russian occupation of Ukrainian territories (and extermination of Ukrainian citizens, language and culture).

Let’s hope when one day Ivanishvili gets what he deserves and isn’t able to run away to Moscow.

The US is a bigger military force (qualitatively and quantitatively) than all other NATO members combined (although UK/France are no slouches and some smaller countries like Poland, Sweden, Finland hold their own). This is a critical issue in holding back the russians.

You denying this (and ignoring that russia is currently occupying 3 non-NATO members, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia), says everything we need to know.

The real irony is that I lean much more towards the Palestinian side, but that doesn’t mean I am going to buying into “DATO forced poor putin to invade1!”

Find a new boogeyman to justify a “defense” organization that has never acted in self-defense.

Made up in my head. Poland and Baltic nations totally didn’t join NATO to protect themselves from Russian invasions like in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia.

You fake leftists are funny. Thankfully, no one gives a shit about you at all.

I have not, no.

Thank you for proving my point with your “BATO made putin do it” world salad!

I couldn’t have done a better job myself.

I am not a “lib”, the very term “liberal” isn’t even used correctly in North America.

This was a very specific answer to specific claims (get rid of the US, stop collaborating with Israel). These are ridiculous statements in context of NATO’s primary goal, defence against russian invasions.

I hope you and your family end up in a russian internment camp!

There is some truth to that, but I think you generally want savvy individuals even in ceremonial positions

Seems reasonable in the video.

But the “NATO opposition” is a massive red flag that suggests a complete inability to read and understand the russians.