The use of depleted uranium munitions has been fiercely debated, with opponents like the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons saying there are dangerous health risks from ingesting or inhaling depleted uranium dust, including cancers and birth defects.

  • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    The real alternative is for Russians to go home. Who the fuck cares who’s using them? They’re being invaded. Russia didn’t need to invade them, but they thought they could get away with it (again). This isnt the first invasion of a sovereign country Russia has done. It isn’t even the first invasion of Ukraine. The US didn’t get involved in the others. Are we just going to excuse those?

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know why people keep repeating this. Do you honestly think this is a coherent point? Russia is obviously not going to go home no matter how many times you’re going to repeat it. It’s a meaningless and useless statement that literally solves nothing. Either NATO can defeat Russia or not, so far it looks like NATO is not able to do so. What NATO is accomplishing is prolonging the conflict without changing the outcome. That means more people dying and having their lives ruined so that US military industry can make a profit and so that US can try and weaken Russia geopolitically. Anybody who thinks the west is in this conflict to help Ukraine is an utter imbecile.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Should the US have sent supplies to the allies in WWI and WWII before joining? It was just prolonging the war and causing people to die, right?

        The reason the US is doing it is not morality. Everyone knows that. International politics is never about morality, it’s about power. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t also the moral option.

        Also, NATO and the US are not in the war. We’re sending supplies. The US isn’t even sending the good stuff. We’re sending parts of our stockpile that’s old and has just been sitting around waiting for a use. They haven’t sent the newer technology so it it isn’t studied in case a real enemy requires them to be used.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          It takes an incredible amount of historical illiteracy to try and draw parallels between WW2 and the proxy war US is waging against Russia in Ukraine. However, if you weren’t historically illiterate, then you’d also know that US companies continued working with the nazis well into the war, and IBM is famously responsible for facilitating the holocaust.

          Also, NATO and the US are very obviously in this war, and one has to be utterly intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            More What-aboutism to dodge answering the question. That’s expected, and it’s about as good as an answer to me and anyone paying attention.

            • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              You brought up the example of the US in relation to WWII. If you make a comparison, you can’t get stroppy when people point out that it contradicts your main argument and in fact supports the argument that you’re trying to challenge.

              However, for as long as you think the US is the Good GuyTM, you’re going to struggle to find examples that support your viewpoint, so you may want to be careful with any comparison. Otherwise, you’ll start to notice a pattern of them pointing out that the US was as monstrous as always in the cited example and then you’ll say they’re doing whataboutism ad infinitum.

              • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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                1 year ago

                It doesn’t contradict my example. Companies are not the government.

                I don’t think the US are “the good guys.” There aren’t good guys in international politics. They don’t do things for moral reasons. I do think the invaders are bad, whichever war were talking about. The US happens to be giving supplies to the people fighting off an invasion now and in WWI and WWII.

                You still didn’t answer the god damn question. Again, expected. You guys never answer the fucking question. You just go on offense because then you get to act smart and in control, but it makes you look weak and stupid. If you can’t answer a simple question then what good is your opinion?

                • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  The reason it seems like I’m dodging the question is because if I can challenge the assumptions in the question and show that it’s a faulty question, the answer becomes irrelevant. Still, if you keep reading, you’ll see that I have provided an answer below.

                  As for my opinion, it’s like anyone else’s. It isn’t worth much. My statements of fact, however… in a world where people try to paint the US in a positive light, endlessly making distinctions to deny any blame to the US state for all the horror that it unleashes on the world… probably also not worth much.

                  I either make a logical argument that stands up to scrutiny or I don’t. If my argument stands up, it doesn’t matter whether I look like a weak idiot. If my argument fails, it doesn’t matter if I pretend control or to appear smart or to act it.

                  For a bourgeois state, it is ahistorical to separate the government from it’s businesses. Companies and the government go hand in hand. It was, for example, the East India Company, rather than the British ‘state’, that colonised so much of Asia.

                  In relation to WWII and the US-Nazi connection, Michael Parenti wrote in Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (City Lights Books, CA, 1997, p17):

                  Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by allied bombings. General Motors collected over $33 million. Pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. firms. Thus Cologne was almost levelled by Allied bombing but it’s Ford plant, providing military equipment for the Nazi army, was untouched; indeed German civilians began using the plant as an air raid shelter. [Citing Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy (Dell, NY, 1983).]

                  Fn14: After the war, Herman Abs, head of the Deutsche Bank and in effect “Hitler’s paymaster,” was hailed by David Rockefeller as “the most important banker of our time.” … Rockefeller [failed to say] a word about Abs’ Nazi connections, his bank’s predatory incursions across Nazi occupied Europe, and his participation, as a board member of I.G. Farben, in the use of slave labor at Auschwitz: Robert Karl Miller, Portland Free Press, Sept/Oct 1994

                  All this, and we haven’t really touched on:

                  • the way that US state officials intervened to—
                    • protect Nazi war criminals from prosecution at Nuremberg,
                    • rehabilitate and promote Nazi officials to lead NATO,
                    • doing the all this with Mussolini and others,
                  • how the US ruling class platformed Nazis in the US press and silenced critical domestic voices,
                  • the relationship between the US government and its ruling bourgeois, the familial relations.

                  The US is to be applauded for is role in defeating the Nazi war machine, including supplying the allies. The US soldiers who fought the Nazis were heroes. But it is problematic to claim the US (i.e. it’s ruling class) was on the right side of history through that period.

                  Likewise, in Ukraine, the US worsened the whole mess, possibly caused it all, by meddling in the region since before the 90’s. Since the recent invasion US media and spokespersons have been nonchalantly saying the US has reaped many benefits from the war with very little cost (except for Ukrainians—added in parentheses, as if the Ukrainians are of secondary concern).

                  I do think the invaders are bad, whichever war were talking about.

                  I think we agree in principle and I think I know what you mean but I must raise a challenge. There’s an example that shows an invasion is not necessarily bad, the one that you pointed out: the Allies invading Nazi Germany.

                  If invasion is not bad in one example situation, then logically it doesn’t hold as a blanket statement. It cannot of itself lead us to conclude that Russia is bad for invading Ukraine. To be clear, I am not saying Russia is good for invading Ukraine; I’m saying it is not self evidently bad by virtue of being the invader.

                  To further the clear statement, I wish Russia had not invaded. I wish the war would end today. Short of that I wish a ceasefire could be negotiated for today, so that peace and an end to the war can be negotiated for the near future.

                  No flippant comments about how dangerous war is for the workers who must fight in it. Only firm conviction that the only right choice is to stop the killing and maiming as soon as possible, not to send increasingly dangerous weapons with increasingly higher chances of causing collateral damage.

                  Unfortunately for Ukraine, the US wanted the opposite at all stages and it’s representatives (officials and corporate agents) have machinated to ensure that war broke out and now that it cannot stop.

    • Aryuproudomenowdaddy [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Have you ever played 4x games? Do you know what encirclement is? When an opponent is ringing your territory with bases while they keep telling you it’s totally cool bro, they’re just working on their defenses while making alliances with players adjacent to you, what do you consider is their end game?

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, everyone Russia has invaded has been for defence. Sure buddy. The real world is more complex than a 4X game, but even then you can use that to understand why someone would invade another country. They wanted to steal the resources and population. You may use your statement as a justification, but it is never the actual reason. The excuse of it being defensive is rediculous. Yeah, invading a sovereign country (multiple times) is sure to make the alliance “encircling” you stop. Seriously? Do you believe that rhetoric or are you just saying it because you’re supposed to?