Lol, I couldn’t disagree more. We’re in a golden age of Media and as well as other forms of Information. It’s crazy how much is available at our fingertips. Millions of people are doing everything they can to dig up the truth, and modern technology means they have so much more opportunity than ever before.
We just are also in a golden age of fucking bullshit republican insanity at the same time.
Especially when you consider that many of the best investigative journalists such as Bari Weiss have been driven from major media and relegated to substack and similar. I never would have thought 30 years ago that we’d be where we are today when investigate journalists are shunned by major media (and occasionally blown up with car bombs in Malta) and barely anyone notices, much less cares.
I’m going to guess that there’s been hundreds of similar journalists that we’ve never heard of because substack / twitter / medium etc. were not a thing, so they were just fired and forgotten.
Shit, how many journalists could you even name 30 years ago?
Official expectations were all over the map from limiting high-tech imports that would eventually starve their military (The White House) to “compel Russia to halt its military aggression (Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs)” to cutting off capital inflows and degrading “Russia’s ability to project power and threaten the peace and stability of Europe (US Treasury).”
These were all ostensibly reasonable expectations, even if some of us knew they wouldn’t work as advertised. Rone of this has really borne out over time. High-tech imports are back up as Russia found ways to circumvent the sanctions, and obviously they continue the aggression in Ukraine. Their economy appears relatively healthy.
But as winter descends on Europe, I’m quite confident that we will see some significant sanction effects to economies, standards of living, and maybe even to the cohesion of society. Emmanuel Macron this week announced the “end of abundance,” while Germany stockpiles firewood and prepares for civil unrest.
Tell me, when the sanctions were announced, did you think it would lead to the “end of abundance?” Was that part of the plan for you? It wasn’t for me. I was kind of hoping politicians might work on repairing supply chains, instead of exacerbating the problems with sanctions. And I want to be clear that my expectations for politicians are really low. Ensuring their constituents can eat food and heat their homes should be top priority. Defending Ukraine to the last Ukrainian can be a priority, but certainly a lower priority than food and heat.
In any case, I’ll be back here in a couple of months to remind you of how things are going.
Some good few questions.
First I think macron is being fluffy, and also talking broadly about how life in the 21st century kind of sucks. I also think you’re predictions about food and warmth are also fluffy and dramatic. It is fair to say the whole world is worse off now, but I don’t think thousands of French people will die to cold or starvation. The 1st world is still basically rich and will continue to be this winter.
As for my expectations:
Certainly things have gone differently, but I think different from you? I never thought we were going to go back to the happy days again.
I suppose it’s possible, if the Ukraine really crushes it, but I don’t have much hopes about this war and never did. Wars are generally expensive, both in lives and money.
Nothing to see here…
It was a 1 in a million chance doc
Unrelated…
(In before “don’t both sides defenestrate political opponents???”)
Yikes
So, VV Putin has run out of polonium?
Well, he fell out of a hospital window, so probably didn’t poisoned properly.
Most likely sanction related is my guess. I wouldn’t be surprised if that Miami raid was Trump related.
Aside: My favorite sentence from the article is “Vekselberg, a Ukrainian-born businessman, built a fortune by investing in the aluminum and oil industries in the post-Soviet era.” Investing? I guess being handed a privatized aluminum industry that ended up the largest aluminum company in the world could be considered investing.
Seems like this topic has lost a lot of steam, but the Ukrainians have been really taking it to the Russians for the last little bit. It will be interesting to see what happens in Russia as it looks increasingly likely the Ukraine is going to push Russian forces back out of it’s country. Will Putin do something foolish? Will some faction in Russia overthrow him?
Russia will continue to bomb the shit out of everything and claim they’re winning.
Since Secondlife left we have only been getting the MSM (western) point of view. For the alternative of view you have to go to RT or moonofalabama that have a different perspective on what is happening.
Doesn’t really feel like a different perspective. I mean maybe it wasn’t another blunder, there are plenty of valid reasons to give up territory. But this article doesn’t seem to argue either way.
