HK65

Yes. And so is Russia.

Israel wants it so that there are no more people who call themselves Palestinians in Gaza. Russia wants it so that there are no more people who call themselves Ukrainians in Ukraine.

They specifically mention that they use your data for marketing and advertising, and they also say in the CCPA section that California may view their activities as "selling data", as "some of our data sharing described in this privacy policy may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” under those definitions, such as  disclosing Personal Data to third parties for our own advertising purposes."

So, yeah, they totally do sell all your data to everyone who is paying.

I don't often say this, but that society may just deserve this leader.

Except Russia also did and is doing settler colonialism, inasmuch they have been moving Ukrainians out and Russians into Ukraine for the past century at least, as they did with other Soviet republics, as they are doing to neighbouring states, with the aim of eroding their national identity.

Just like they are doing now. The only marginal difference is that there are not enough Ukrainians to alter electoral balances, and Russia would be able to dissolve the population of Ukraine via forced relocations instead of just killing them all. Both are genocide by the way.

They are attempting to do the same thing, to erase the national identity of the people living there and conquer the place.

Even the settlement thing matches, the Soviets used to move Russians into all the republics to erase national boundaries and make them all uniformly Russian.

BBC has changed the headline, and it shows inconsistently on their own site now, some places show the original, some the new.

I'll change it.

Edit: I've done it and now the link and the title shows different headlines, gotta love BBC.

EU tried to get its own minerals deal with Ukraine in the wake of Trump demands.

Apples and oranges.

The US minerals deal was "give us all your minerals, we will build our own mines on them that will not be subject to your own country's laws. You may keep some of the proceeds."

The EU minerals deal was "we will give you money and know-how to build your own mines, in exchange for long-term supply agreements. The resources and the mines will remain yours."

The difference is the one between someone extorting you to become an indentured taxi driver, and someone offering you a car in exchange for driving them to the airport once in a while. EU support was also not contingent on the deal, while it was made apparent that US support was.

Also Ukraine joining the EU would not make a “buffer”

That was indeed bad wording, what I meant was that the EU would gain strategic depth and more advantageous launch site arrangements for missile warfare and whatnot, which would be useful for deterrence. I am from the Eastern periphery as well, and TBH I feel that there indeed is a first/second class EU citizen divide mainly along whether your country joined before or after 2004 (which would make me a second class citizen), but I feel that that particular division is getting less pronounced.

The headline is not editorialised, BBC is weird with this, I didn't notice, sorry, thanks for pointing it out.

Look the article up in their search: https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=visszanyal+a+fagyi&d=NEWS_PS

Or look at the title bar of your browser when opening it. Lemmy retrieved this one automatically. I'll add an edit to clarify.

Russia is gaining so little territory that it really doesn't matter with regards to the overall war. The frontlines shifted single towns in the past three years, and there are still Ukrainian forces even on Russian territory. For example, one of the largest frontline movements in a straight line was from Avdiivka to Udachne in the past 18 months.

That is 70 kilometers towards Kyiv, so let's round up to around 50 kilometers over a year. Kyiv is another 600 kilometers, so if they kept this pace, they would get there by 2037. Extrapolating their current - verified, so again a very low estimate - loss rate, it would require around 15000 more tanks, and around half a million people dead, and even more wounded, again, by a very, very low estimate done by BBC et al., these are the people they found by name.

So all this is an incredibly Russian-tilted assessment, as Avdiivka was an Ukrainian salient closed by Russians, while Udachne is a Russian salient, so this rate of advancement could not even be sustained in the vicinity of Avdiivka, much less the entire frontline. Much less while outperforming the peacetime production of the whole USSR in its heyday.

Zelensky's administration - it is incorrect to call it his "rule", as he has been elected in a democratic and transparent manner that anyone could audit, unlike Putin - is going to end certainly either way shortly after the war ends, and is not really a factor in ceasefire negotiations for two reasons.

One, after a definite end to the war, he only has another 5 year term at maximum, so he is not going to be a perpetual dictator like Putin, it's more like a Churchill situation there, the country is at war so it's impossible to hold elections The other reason is that a simple ceasefire will not make elections viable again, as the martial law will not end until the war does, so Zelensky will stay in office.

The EU is not trying to "buy up Ukraine at a discount", they are pushing for Ukrainian EU membership, which would be mutually beneficial. On the one hand, the EU would gain massive strategic food production and a large experienced military, and further buffer area towards Russia.

Ukraine would in turn get direct security guarantees going way beyond NATO, a nuclear deterrent, and immense amounts of monetary support, as in free money intended to build up Ukraine to be a good trading partner. They would both gain full entry to each other's markets, so in that regard, Ukraine would not be "bought up" by the EU, they would become the EU, with full voting rights and representation in government.

The thing I'm wondering about is that even the MIC of Europe and the US is intertwined, inasmuch the US is switching to German rifles from their old M4s, and a significant portion of the F35 is also manufactured in the EU. I wonder if that's in scope of the tariffs, or if it's purchased by the US government directly so it would be exempt.

Also Kickl in Austria, Wilders in the NL, and the assorted Russian-supported far-right.

A journalist in Hungary just said "we would put our hands together (meaning it would be a huge improvement) to have a far right like the one Poland just got rid of". Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Meloni's group either, but at least they are not straight up traitors to Europe and their respective countries.