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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • No, I get that. And I really wish they make the Russian invaders suffer. The point I’m trying to make is that without the material support they have been receiving from the USA I don’t see a way for Ukraine to keep fighting toe to toe with Russia for long (I hope I’m proven wrong, I really do. But I don’t see how).

    Of course this doesn’t mean that Ukranians are going to roll over and accept this without fighting. But if they decide to continue the resistance, the nature of the conflict will change dramatically. I just don’t see how Ukraine can maintain the current stalemate without the huge material support they are receiving today. But if they decide to keep fighting (which I hope they do), this will become an asymetrical conflict like Afghanistan or Vietnam.

    Obviously I may be wrong, I hope I’m wrong. But it seems naive to assume nothing is going to change without USA support.


  • EDIT: Turns out that the Europeans are dramatically ramping their aid to Ukraine (https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/). So the situation is not as bad as I thought, they may be ok without the US. Keeping the original comment below anyway.

    Unfortunately yes in practice. Ukraine can’t sutain their defense from Russia without all the external support they are getting, in particular from the USA (and NATO in general). So in practice, the USA can absolutely negotiate with Russia and then force Ukraine to accept whatever they negotiate. And given that the Americans picked Trump as president this has a good chance of happening.

    Not saying this is right or anything like that. It sucks for the Ukranians and of course I would like for this to be different, this should be up to the Ukranians. But this is the reality of the situation, turns out that puting a traitor in charge of the biggest super power in the world has world reaching consequences even if americans didn’t think about that when voting.





  • Sorry for the late response, busy day hahaha. A few things:

    1. Please don’t get hung out on the particular examole I picked. I just googled Monsanto seed lawsuit and picked the first example. But there are so many many more examples.

    2. I mean, you don’t see that’s the problem I was pointing out exactly? Again, I’m not against GMOs themselves (though again, totally unneducated opinion). My concern, as someone from a third world country, is precisely with the laws and economic pressure these companies use to exploit people in our countries using this technology.

    Let me explain how this works in my experience:

    1. Monsanto or any of these companies create a new GMO. This GMO is usually actually better at something than traditional crops. Though here better is usually economically better, as in cheaper to produce.
    2. These companies start preassuring every farmer in our countries to use their seeds and crops. Usually this is done through economic preassure. That is usually they price their seeds so they are cheaper to use than traditional crops (on it’s own, not terrible). There is usually some preassure thorugh laws anf marketing to force people to switch too.
    3. The farmers using these new crops will outperform, in an economical sense, the farmers that keep using the traditional crops. They will produce better crops for less money for a while. Usually the ones who survuve this are the big farmers, most family farms can’t compete here. After some time of this we end in a situation where all the crops are replaced with the new GMO, patented crop, giving these companies a monopoly over our food.

    If things ended here it would be okish, though I wiould still hate it hahaha. But we all know that companies will always exploit their monopoly positions as much as possible. So this usually ends with even more hunger in our countries even though we now technicslly have better crops. So yeah, I think you are wrong. If our onky options are to continue using old “inneficient” crops, or this shit, I prefer the traditional crops. So good on Greenpeace for blocking this.


  • Thanks for a nice response! My main problem with checking news sites is that it’s quite a bit of work and I’m very lazy hahaha. Specially because of what I said, for me this is mostly about my curiosity, so I can’t invest the time required to properly inform myself this way. Plus there is the issue of bias, I only speak spanish and english, so my sources are biased that way by default (fuck Putin just in case anyone mistakes this for support for that prick lol).

    In my naivety I was hoping to get a few websites with like a minute to minute of the developments. I remember seeing several beautiful sites like these for the Syrian civil war, and I assume there are some for this conflict too. Obviously, as you pointed out, these sites will surely be biased (some to one side, some to the other) and incomplete. But if I have a few of these, I can at least go and take a look at them everytime I see a headline like this and create my own uneducated opinion lol.