If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying.

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Cake day: April 30th, 2024

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  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlBanned from communitytoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldCommunity Notes strikes again
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    5 days ago

    Both of us won out from that exchange.

    You might want to look into what happened to the French government and its leadership shortly after funding that little proxy war. Let me give you a quick rundown, because I enjoy history:

    The American Revolution was incredibly expensive and put France into an extreme financial crisis. Of course, the court’s extravagent personal spending didn’t help things (and made for better revolutionary propaganda), but in reality it was about 6% of total government expenditure, while loan payments, mostly from the war, represented around 50%. Even with very high taxes, it was impossible to balance the budget. A report from March 1788 estimated a deficit of 20% of expenditures, which could only be made up by more borrowing

    This financial crisis led to the king calling the Estates General, something that hadn’t been done in hundreds of years, to bring representatives of the three estates (nobility, clergy, and everyone else) together to work out a solution. When an agreement could not be reached, the representatives of the third estate left the Estates General and declared that they were creating a “National Assembly,” which claimed to represent the popular democratic will, and started work on a new constitution. The royal family ended up declared traitors and got their heads chopped off. And the rest is history. (My source for this is an old book I own called The Coming of the French Revolution by Georges Lefebvre)

    So, dumping a bunch of money on a proxy war in a bid to raise their geopolitical status and undermine their rival didn’t really work out so well for France. They were so focused on playing geopolitics against Britain, but by failing to address declining conditions at home, they created a much more dangerous domestic threat which brought about the government’s downfall.





  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlBanned from communitytoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldhe loves his bribes
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    7 days ago

    He’s appeasing the people who put him in power and who determine whether he stays in power.

    Why would he bother appealing to the American people? We don’t control foreign policy, and even if we did, the public is so fickle, ignorant, and easily manipulated that all it takes to get people to turn on him is a random unsourced tweet from a cryptobro.





  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlBanned from communitytoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldhe loves his bribes
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    7 days ago

    Because it demonstrates that you’re not qualified to speak about foreign policy issues if you can’t even keep two very different countries straight. Much moreso when you don’t apologize and own up to it when it’s pointed out, but instead double down and say, “So what?” because anyone can make an error, but it only becomes a mistake when you refuse to correct it.

    This whole thread is full of people who were fully on board with funding Julani to fight Assad because the news told them Assad needed to go, only, they forgot they support him and saw a random tweet calling him a terrorist and only a handful of people were actually aware enough to remember who they support and push back on it. But you really took the cake, you really went above and beyond, by not even getting the country right.

    If this is the state of the American public’s awareness of countries like Syria (and it is), then pro-US leaders like Jolani obviously can’t rely on them, who will turn on them at the drop of a hat because they saw a random tweet calling them a terrorist. But I guess they’re in luck since the public has so little influence over policy. So naturally what they do is appease the ruling class, through lucrative deals and bribes.

    But who cares? So what if the post calls the US friendly leader of a precarious country a terrorist? So what if you mix up Qatar and Syria? So what if you talk nonsense grounded in willful ignorance because you can’t be assed to learn basic facts about countries the US has been fucking with, yet still expect people to listen to you? The important thing is, for a wonderful moment, you got to make fun of Trump.

    Liberals are approximately 10% less anti-intellectual than conservatives, which means they’re still extremely anti-intellectual, but don’t realize it because of how low the bar is.





  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlBanned from communitytoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldhe loves his bribes
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    7 days ago

    Huh?

    Not that long ago CNN was writing puff pieces about how he’d “moved on” from his radical past. Around the same time, Biden removed a bounty the US had had on him. He’s capitulated a bunch to Israel and done just about everything he can to appease the US.

    Some of us flag burning commies are critical of him because we blindly hate anyone on America’s side for capitulating to Israel and privatizing the economy, and have been skeptical about the mainstream narrative of him moving past his past. We were also skeptical about this whole project of arming “moderate rebels” like him in Syria, fearing that it would destabilize the region. But even I would say, now that he’s in, that trying to replace him would probably just destabilize the region even further.

    Idk who this Ed Krassenstein is but his name is red in Shinigami Eyes and his bio describes himself as an “AI and Crypto futurist” so he’s not one of ours. So, uh, is this based on a coherent, informed position on Syria, or is this just a knee-jerk reaction to a headline?

    If the US shouldn’t accept Jolani as the leader of Syria, then what should they do? Find some more moderate rebels to support against the previous moderate rebels it supported? Have Israel and Turkey annex the entire country? Keep sanctioning them forever for no reason no matter how much they capitulate and cooperate? What exactly would that be aiming to accomplish?