They are burning the "cards" and "leverage" they had. The trust Europe, West and other democratic countries had in US will take generations to rebuild. And meantime US provoking other countries to ally against itself to punish this behavior. That's just game theory. It makes strategic sense for all other countries to co operate against the US now. Personally, I'm looking forward now for Europe to become self-reliant on technology.
I believe the image of the US in the West started changing considerably during Trump's first mandate. Biden coming back hasn't completely repaired that change, but really it mostly came back (as in, "The US screwed up with Trump, but that's done now").
I think the 6 weeks of this second mandate have already made irreparable damage. When during the first mandate people tended to be "fed up with the US bullshit", now they are genuinely scared. Trump was not a one-off mistake. The people not only confirmed it, but seems generally okay with what's happening now; some Americans complain, but mostly when they are personally affected, it seems. It doesn't seem like the US people is shocked by the idea of destabilising the West. Not saying it is the case, but that is how it seems.
The trust is gone, I don't think it will come back. To the West, the US are partners, not friends anymore. It's still better than enemies, even though the US has been considering it... seemingly with the support of the people.
> Personally, I'm looking forward now for Europe to become self-reliant on technology.
Yeah, in a way, if Europe managed to be independent militarily, that would bring some stability. Let's hope they go there!
Perhaps surprisingly, Europe has more nuclear weapons than China (France: 290 warheads, UK: 225 warheads, China: 500 warheads). China never really bought into the mutually assured destruction doctrine in the same way that the US and Soviet Union did.
China invested heavily into hypersonic delivery vehicles instead of scale. They didn't want nuclear winter, they want to make sure that ANY attempt by the US to project power in "Their" waters evaporates in a plasma ball. They don't seem interested in nuking the US mainland.
Instead, their focus has been on building invasion barges so that they can take Taiwan. So that's exciting. Hope none of you like computer chips!
They were able to nuke the west coast in the 90s. I don't think they have been sitting still with their ICBMs, the same ones that get your taikounauts into the space are the ones you use to deliver nukes.
Regardless, they only need enough to make nuclear war with them MAD, which I think they've had for a decade or so.
I mean, see Doctor Strangelove. If you have a doomsday weapon, that’s only helpful if you _tell_ people about it! If China had built loads of warheads, they’d hardly keep that secret, as most of these point of having loads of warheads is for everyone else to know you had them.
Realistically, by the time China and France got on the nuclear scene, doctrine had shifted from “nuclear torpedos, nuclear guns, nuclear landmines, nuclear everything” to “you have some submarines with missiles; you can have other stuff if you want, but no-one cares about it”. There’s little point in having thousands of warheads, these days.
(The UK did briefly go down the ‘nuclear everything’ road, but pulled back for cost/sanity reasons)
I meant that your data is out of date, and China has moved quickly in the last ten years. They went in the last ten years from being able to just hit the west coast to hitting all the way up to the Midwest, do you think they won’t have some amount of increased coverage in the next, especially with their space program accelerating their ICBM program?
The truth is that China hit MAD awhile ago and doesn’t really need to play up or even build much more on its nuclear arsenal. They are better off investing in conventional warfare for the near term, and especially in new arms like drones that give them an actual advantage in future conflicts.
How does server know the cookie is valid if it doesn't store it and how does it know csrf token is valid if it doesn't store it and finally how does it know that this csrf token relates to this cookie session token if it doesn't store it?
The CSRF token can have nothing to do with the cookie session information. you can store CSRF as a separate cookie.
You can validate the CSRF is valid by keeping a key on your server and matching that the token you get can be derived from that key.
See Django's implementation of CSRF for more details. CSRF tokens are separate from session and no CSRF information needs to be stored in database to validate CSRF.
I guess if you know the type but it's not in the enum, then you can save it somewhere else. If the enum changes afterwards, that data can be used to update the enum value.
Yeah, we have all these nice labels for all sorts of things, which makes it sound like everything is figured out, but this is definitely very far from the truth and complexity.
These things definitely help, but the question is how do you get someone started with all of it. It all seems pointless to do for someone with depression.
Yes. Part of the issue is that it's self reinforcing. Once you show this sort of list and accompanying research to someone with depression, it then becomes a choice to stay depressed.
You can remind people that are choosing to be depressed, when they choose not to begin doing thing things to build the momentum needed to not be depressed.
They may be angry. This is ok, since anger is a step towards feeling the full range emotion which is needed to heal. Anger can lead to greif which can lead to sadness which can lead to joy and gratitude.
Depression is about repression or supression of feeling, not feeling the "wrong things".
It seems like Russia has managed to polarize US and manipulate one side completely to do their bidding. It's a strategy that they call ideological subversion. Russia has managed to split US in such a way that one side will always pick the opposite opinion from the other side and tie their egos and identities with it, effectively manipulating them into doing anything. For that side the most important thing becomes owning the other side, and not caring about anything else. It is very sad. US right is just victim to a very effective mass manipulation technique from a foreign actor specialized in this.
I’ll be honest, I think both sides are being manipulated in the sense that they each see the other as less over time.
On their whole I think Democratic policies retain more sense at this point but a lot of bullshit snuck into Democratic thinking. The intentions of that thinking were good but the result was obvious division.
I think this is true, but the fact that it’s even possible is the problem. The US will probably develop an immune system against such manipulation in the future. In fact, that effort may already be underway.
It's crazy that this is possible. I wish US would develop this immune system. Where do you see this light at the end of the tunnel to think that effort may be underway though? I hope you are right.
The thing is... That even if Zelensky did have the perfect dress code, perfect niceties, the whole thing was a setup with trying to pressure Zelensky into a bad deal. And if Zelensky was not to accept it the goal was to humiliate and embarrass him publically. So Vance and Trump would have gone for any other possible targets they can find, or alternatively invent some. So they kept provoking Zelensky whole time and even before when Trump called Zelensky a dictator, which is far more disrespectful than anything Zelensky has done. Even through that, it's crazy the patience Zelensky had.
> the whole thing was a setup with trying to pressure Zelensky into a bad deal.
The deal was quite good. It basically coupled the rebuilding of Ukraine (and ownership shares resulting from it) to a fund, rather than the government itself.
If Russia had then taken over Ukraine, they'd have to expropriate the fund to gain any benefits, but that'd also mean expropriating the minority ownership of the US.
> Trump called Zelensky a dictator, which is far more disrespectful than anything Zelensky has done.
Sure, but he is, and that's a huge issue for any negotiations going forward. Ukrainian martial law only delays parliamentary elections, not presidential ones.
If Zelensky doesn't either get a democratic mandate or recognized as an official negotiator by the Verkhovna Rada, any agreements made with him can later just be rejected by Ukraine.
The deal was awful and Ukraine would get nothing but delayed destruction. he isn't a fool. Rebuilding is useless with security to not have it torn down in 5 years when Russia recovers.
>Sure, but he is
Oh, so we're not going to have a productive conversation, then.
>"PACE President Tiny Kox: It is up to the Government, Parliament and the people of Ukraine to decide when and how to conduct elections"
Pretty much every country has martial law rules. So disagree or not, to call someone a dictator while defending against a war is outright malicious in my mind.
Not sure how to delete my previous comment but the claim that martial law extends only the power of the parliament is wrong. I've clearly relied on a bad source of information.
There is a strong argument that the Ukrainian President looses a lot of powers when his term ends under martial law, but negotiating international treaties is not one of them.
The Ukrainian constitution doesn't explicitly allow for the President to remain in office under martial law, but it does not allow for pretty much any elections and doesn't provide for a transfer of power as it does under other circumstances.
It also requires the office of the President to not be vacated.
.
So, the transfer of power that would occur under an irregular vacancy from the President to the Prime Minister likely occurs to the President himself if his term ends under martial law?
Kinda, but the US made clear that at this point they will only back Zelensky in the negotiations.
Without Russia and Ukraine agreeing on how to end this war, split the spoils and salvage the little that's left, outside parties will hardly be willing to commit to enforcing the peace.
Ideally a solution can be found that wont make Ukraine (or Russia) dependent on the mood of an outside party, but if that's realistic is questionable at best.
I think the phases of negotiations could look about like this:
1. Cease and freeze the conflict
1. a) Build a framework for rebuilding Ukraine and Russia
2. A third party establishes with both sides the format of the upcoming negotiations.
3. Both sides find partners backing them, establish their minimum positions and ways to compromise on them without giving up on them (e.g. if territory can't be regained, shared management and dual citizenship for the people living there might be possible)
(4.) The neutral third party, together with the partner countries of both sides establishes sanctions for violations during the negotiations.
5. Very messy negotiations on the outcome of the war
6. Even messier negotiations on a security framework between the two countries
7. Mudslinging contest on security framework involving all relevant parties
8. Sign peace deal.
9. Try to toss aside Ukraine, get reminded what you agreed to in 1. a), regret ever having agreed to that extortion racket
> 1. a) Build a framework for rebuilding Ukraine and Russia
What do you mean rebuilding Russia?
> The neutral third party, together with the partner countries of both sides establishes sanctions for violations during the negotiations.
Sanctions so far have done nothing to deter Russia.
The problem with negotiations is that Russia would never come to a peace agreement which legitimately had potential influence on them not being able to invade again. Because their goal is to invade again, after the peace deal.
Either you overpower them and show effectively that you have overpowered them, or they keep coming.
The only peace deal Russia would accept is if:
a) It just allows them to invade again as soon as possible.
b) It tells them not to invade again, but the consequences are meaningless so they'll invade again and nothing happens, and the same thing repeats again.
There's a fundamental misunderstanding of what Russia is. To simplify this, you need to think of it as a bot playing Civilization that is programmed to maximize its territory gains, while at the same time have some sort of uncensored LLM spewing random justifications for why they are invading, and influence on other countries to have them approve of those invasions.
Russia has taken quite a bit of damage, too (although it's tiny compared to Ukraine).
But most importantly: No matter who ends up responsible for the costs in each of the cases, both countries need a clear way to full recovery.
Otherwise you're just going to end up with an East-West Germany situation at best or an Mexico-US situation (cartels, crime, human trafficking, smuggling) at worst.
> Sanctions so far have done nothing to deter Russia.
Because the price the sanctions imposed were lower than the price not continuing would have.
If the price is simply staying at the table and keep talking, even minor sanctions would get the job done.
> Russia would never come to a peace agreement which legitimately had potential influence on them not being able to invade again. Because their goal is to invade again, after the peace deal.
I honestly dont understand why so many people hinge their entire position on this.
Russia has been warning about the situation we've got right now since at least 2002 and VERY explicitly since at least 2007.
Why do so many people keep ignoring everything Russia has talked about for decades (CFE treaty, NATO expansion, OSCE format failure, ongoing military escalation and lack of security guarantees) and just jump straight to:
Putin likes land and Putin wants to rebuild the USSR.
There isn't even the slightest sliver of evidence for this, infact quite the opposite:
- Putin could have easily kept Georgia in 2008
- The nations east of the Caspian Sea are infinitely easier to integrate into Russia, but no such efforts were undertaken
- Belarus could have been integrated into Russia much more easily, too
- There were plenty of very pro-Russian governments in Ukraine, Putin could have utilized to tie Ukraine politically much more closely to Russia with the intent of taking over in the future
> Either you overpower them and show effectively that you have overpowered them, or they keep coming.
Just the bloody opposite. The Russian mindset puts the security of the nation first. If you attempt to overpower them, they will keep escalating until either side becomes incapable of fighting.
Which is an incredibly dangerous course to take against a nation that is sitting on the Soviet nuclear stockpile.
And yes, the nukes work. All (except NK and Israel?) nuclear nations keep regular inspecting each other's nuclear arsenals for proper maintenance and functionality. And nukes are VERY simple weapons. The by far most complicated component being the conventional explosive chain involved and nobody questions Russia's capabilities on that part.
> while at the same time have some sort of uncensored LLM spewing random justifications for why they are invading
Agreed, except for the "uncensored" part. It's heavily censored, just in a very ... unconventional way.
It's hard to imagine who came up with these talking points:
- Satanist necromancers raising the Nazis from their graves
- Supersoldiers being bred in secret laboratories
- Caveman drawings having been found depicting Ukraine and Russia as one country with Moscow as its capital
.
On the other hand, everything said since the 2022 invasion is hardly to be taken seriously, since all official diplomatic dialog broke down.
Nothing Putin is saying can be taken seriously or at face value. I am from a country neighboring Russia. In fact, if Ukraine was to fall, we would be one of the next targets. We all here understand who and what Putin is. We used to be under the USSR and thankully we were able to restore our independence. Putin's rhetoric constantly contradicts with itself. He wants to build a legacy. He wants to be the largest power in the World. He wants territory. Russia is the reason why our country has mandatory military service, which I attended as well. Year of my life. All we want is to be indendent and live our own peaceful life. Unfortunately we haven't been blessed geographically. The past for us is enough evidence of what Russia is. It is very hard to see Russian propaganda making its way to US in such strides, it is hard to see people believing this type of thing.
Dictators only understand strength. It won't go to nukes, this is also Russian propaganda and Putin threatens nukes weekly, everyone knows he is bsing.
It is clear, Putin has something over Trump or Trump just has some twisted strategy here that I can't make sense of. There was never going to be a deal that would work out well for Ukraine.
Now Europe must do without support of US. Democracy in US has unfortunatly been compromised and failed.
> Also Zelensky should take that "minerals deal". Despite being sold as such, it doesn't give any minerals to the US, but establishes an Ukrainian semi-sovereign fund with the focus of rebuilding Ukraine, financed through the Ukrainian government's revenue from natural resources and financial injections by the US.
Issue is about not having any security guarantees. Problem with dictatorships is that they won't ever stop. The deal is beneficial for Russia. Russia will see it as a win which will encourage them to do the same thing every few years on repeat. Territory is one of the few limited resources in the World. Dictators desperately crave for it. Any economical damage they think is temporary and they see it as an investment. They certainly don't feel economy being bad. But they will feel powerful, but gaining territory. Only deal Zelensky should sign is one which will ensure that Russia doesn't invade Ukraine or any other countries again. Any other deal is a fake peace. Everyone around Russia and who has experience with Russia knows this. E.g. ex soviet countries.
I think the whole thing was a setup, and while Zelensky made mistakes, even with perfect behaviour, it was bound to go in this direction since the deal presented was not something Zelensky or a person with democratic values should accept, and Trump's goal was to humiliate him into submission from the get go.
Consider how much provocation Trump and Vance had done before that, calling Zelensky a dictator, the patience the man had is already amazing to last so long. But they would've kept provoking him until he says something which they can escalate on to humiliation.
> Any economical damage they think is temporary and they see it as an investment.
That's kinda what the deal is about, tho:
1. Ukraine gets rebuild, the US and Ukraine own huge portions of Ukraine's new industry through the fund
2. The fund gets richer and richer with Ukraine slowly taking over management, the US retaining a minority portion
3. Russia attacks Ukraine, captures all of it
4. Nearly all remaining industry and rights to natural ressources are retained by the fund, managed by Ukraine's exile government
5. Russia wants to expropriate the fund to cut off the funding available to the exile government
6. Russia realizes they'd have to expropriate the US government, starts sweating
7. Russia wakes up and decides not to proceed with step 3. to 6., because the downsides of taking over a country (insurgency, tons of explosives everywhere, new huge portions of population on expensive welfare and healthcare, ...) aren't worth it without any of the upsides.
> Issue is about not having any security guarantees.
Because they're not even negotiated yet. The "minerals deal" is something the US and Ukraine can negotiate right now, so it's on the table.
For all the other stuff Russia and Ukraine need to come to the same table, which Ukraine is very reluctant to do.
Trump only tried to get Ukraine to agree to a bare minimum ceasefire, to stop the killing.
> Russia realizes they'd have to expropriate the US government, starts sweating
Not sure what you mean by that? Russia would just nationalize the assets. What would US do about it, if they are not willing to do anything so far? The ownership in this fund would just be nice to have, not make it worth going for Russia then any more than now. And in any case Russia could just make an offer to share the minerals themselves, which they already did. It wouldn't make a difference to US.
> Russia wakes up and decides not to proceed with step 3. to 6., because the downsides of taking over a country (insurgency, tons of explosives everywhere, new huge portions of population on expensive welfare and healthcare, ...) aren't worth it without any of the upsides.
Historically Russia has repeatedly demonstrated willingness to harm their economy in return for gaining more territory.
This deal is worthless in terms of deterring Russia, if Russia is not deterred currently, this deal is not going to make a difference.
The most important thing to Ukraine is - how can we make sure that Russia doesn't invade us again. Everything else is worthless for Ukraine, for the West, and for Democracy.
> Russia would just nationalize the assets. What would US do about it, if they are not willing to do anything so far?
I do not know what keeps governments from doing this, tbh.
But up until now Russia has done so exclusively in a retaliatory manner.
Or them paying their debts to the clearing houses, despite US citizens having been forbidden from accepting their money.
Same with the EU not outright taking over Russia's currency reserves, but taxing them at 100%.
There's something that prevents governments from screwing around on this, even if I do not quite understand what it is.
And the US gov is probably quite high up on the list of entities not to mess with.
> And in any case Russia could just make an offer to share the minerals themselves, which they already did.
Sure, but it's not about the minerals at all. The relation between minerals and this deal is about the same like the relation of a pineapple tree to pizza.
> Historically Russia has repeatedly demonstrated willingness to harm their economy in return for gaining more territory.
Or for no reason whatsoever. But it's not really fair to compare the Communists or the Tsarist Empire to modern Russia.
> The most important thing to Ukraine is - how can we make sure that Russia doesn't invade us again. Everything else is worthless for Ukraine, for the West, and for Democracy.
Ukraine needs to work on this with Russia.
Russia has made clear that they want security guarantees themselves, so a universal solution might be viable. The problem being, that Russia doesn't feel threatened by Ukraine, but those backing it.
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