BRUSSELS—Implicating the Russian leader directly for his role in Alexei Navalny’s passing, world leaders issued a joint statement Friday pledging that President Vladimir Putin would go unpunished. “Mark our words, the European Union will spare no effort in ensuring that Putin experiences absolute...
“Mark our words, the European Union will spare no effort in ensuring that Putin experiences absolutely no repercussions for the outrageous death of a key opposition leader,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
This part, even though from the same article, is true…
At press time, the U.S. House of Representatives had reacted in solidarity to the statement with an arms bill guaranteeing $0 of aid to the Ukrainian military.
Sorry for mixing real NON-ONION news in here — I know you're all easily confused to begin with — but…
[…]the U.S. House adjourned Thursday for a President’s Day recess without acting on aid.[…] House members are scheduled to return Feb. 28.
“It’s about time they step up, don’t you think? Instead of going on a two-week vacation?” Biden told reporters. “Two weeks. What are they thinking? My God, this is bizarre. And it’s just reinforcing all the concern, and almost — I won’t say panic, but real concern about the United States being a reliable ally. This is outrageous.”
The joke only works if you are ignorant to the reality of the world. Dude has been charged with war crimes already. What do you want world leaders to do? Invade Russia and effect a regime change? A) This was tried before, it didn't go well and B) dude has nukes so doing that will go wayyyyy worse than it did the last time it was tried.
So we have to pretend regime change is easy and also pretend Russia doesn't have nuclear weapons so that we can pretend that it would be easy to punish Putin for his crimes so we can react with "Heh, yeah world leaders are useless, LOL."
This sounds so true down to the apathy of the world governments and citizens that it hurts having never been to Eastern Europe myself. I can’t imagine what it must feel to be somewhat dependent on other counties for support in the defiant act of just existing like Ukrainians are today :(
The only comfort I take in governments like those of Russia and China, is that they can't last.
All societies are inherently unstable, and require constant application of pressure on one side of the scales or the other to keep things level.
Systems like democracy (when done right) attempt to find a way to reduce the wobbling of the scale over time, so that whenever possible, the amount of pressure needed in the future will be less and less, so that while the pendulum motion never stops, it become calmer and easier to counteract.
Democracy also avoids placing that burden on a single individual, "averaging out" who is interpreting the wobble and making decisions about where to apply pressure.
Russia's government is doing the opposite. The CCP is using more insidious means that I worry are actually effective but even there the populace has been shown to be on verge of boiling over... And some day soon technology may enable the enforcement of rule by the few, without the co-operation of the many.
Putin is having to use more and more force to counteract the wobble of society, and that is not a recipe for a long-term regime. That he keeps finding ways to apply the additional force needed to delay the tipping point, is not an indicator that he will do so forever. At the very least, he will die one day.
I'm not sure if the prospect of him dying one day is any consolation. I mean, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il died at some point, but nothing really changed for ordinary North Koreans.
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