News and discussion related to Ukraine
*Sympathy for enemy combatants is prohibited.
*No content depicting extreme violence or gore.
*Posts containing combat footage should include [Combat] in title
*Combat videos containing any footage of a visible human must be flagged NSFW
Donate to support Ukraine's Defense
Donate to support Humanitarian Aid
Honestly, I consider the CEO of JP Morgan a bigger existential threat to humankind than any of those places.
Well I came to say "takes one to know one" but bigger threat than Russia and NK is a big call.
Sorry for repeating this comment I just made to another reply, but I don't think I can put it any more succinctly:
Consider how much banks empower Putin by continuing to prop up the petrodollar which helps keep the Russian economy afloat.
Then consider how much these c-suite ghouls get a hard on for LLMs and AI and how much those muddy the waters of what is actually real, factual information and contributes to disinformation and misinformation on the web.
Maybe some would consider bigger a stretch, but I don't.
Putin can go get fucked in the ear though.
Well, I'm with you on Putin can go get fucked. But I think you're misinformed on the "petrodollar empowering Putin".
The dominance of the US dollar as the currency for settlement of international crude oil contracts advantages predominantly the US and secondarily countries with strong currencies in open exchange with the USD. It disadvantages weaker currencies and those with poorer trade terms with the US such as Venezuela and Russia now the latter has been cut off from the western banking system.
Putin being forced to trade his crude in non dollar denominated contracts is one of the (several) reasons the sale price of muscovy crude is now significantly lower than the equivalent from other countries. (TL;DR the sanctions are working).
China has long been lobbying unsuccessfully to break the petrodollar/USD as world reserve currency and failed so far.
The major US banks are just agents of a (very successful) US foreign policy post WW2. They are indeed evil, but not for this reason
Iran and NK? Agreed.
Russia (Putin et al)? They’re on the same level, to be honest. Putin literally conducted false flag “terrorist” bombings in a series of apartment buildings across Russia, and one of the teams was even caught (the FSB, of course, swept it under the rug. The FSB is the successor to the KGB. Putin was a Lt Col. in the KGB before turning to “politics”). His campaign promises to crack down on the perpetrators were a major part of what helped him clinch his initial hold on the Russian presidency.
That's fair, but consider how much banks empower Putin by continuing to prop up the petrodollar which helps keep the Russian economy afloat.
Then consider how much these c-suite ghouls get a hard on for LLMs and AI and how much those muddy the waters of what is actually real, factual information and contributes to disinformation and misinformation on the web.
Maybe some would consider bigger a stretch, but I don't.
Putin can go get fucked in the ear though.
Oh, I agree.
But at the same time, the CEO of JPM isn’t conducting an unprovoked genocidal invasion of a neighboring country.
They’re both clearly very fucking evil, but in different ways.
Russia, Iran, North Korea
Ehhh.
I mean, North Korea doesn't have the resources to do much most of the time. Yeah, they're well-positioned for this conflict, because they've spent a relatively-high chunk of resources they do have on artillery and maintained that over time, built a stockpile. Artillery is a bottleneck on Russia in Ukraine. So they're potentially a factor in Russia's invasion in Ukraine.
But they just don't have the ability to change much in the world, most of the time.
Not that Iran or Russia are exactly in prime condition either, but they aren't at the kind of level where feeding the population is regularly a problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea
Per capita GDP: $640
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran
Per capita GDP: $5,310
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia
Per capita GDP: $14,391
Big difference between those.
Any resources they want to spend on fighting with other countries needs to come out of that, and they have some basic costs like feeding their population that they have to cover before the option to do other things with remaining resources comes up.