Now, your claim is that Russia started the civil war as a pretext to invade and that the separatists are just Russian proxies. On the other hand, the Russian narrative would claim the same thing about the Euromaidan coup.

I guess most the 400.000 - 800.000 Euromaidan protestors were CIA agents in Russias view then?

It’s well known that many people in Eastern European countries don’t trust Russia one bit after their experiences in the USSR. Of course there’s enormous pushback when politicians in power try to strengthen ties with Putin (and cut ties to EU countries), it would be really weird if there weren’t. The same would happen in Poland and many other Eastern European countries who were staunchly anti Putin long before the invasion, even though they don’t have an immediate threat from a shared border with Russia.

In my opinion, if people really cared so much about the Ukrainian people, then we should’ve been providing them with foreign aid for domestic development, long before any of this started.

Before the war, people weren’t really aware of the situation in Ukraine and there were 100 other problems that seemed more urgent, so there just wasn’t any political pressure to do something.

As far as I can see, it’s just about US/Ukrainian state interests vs Russian state interests

Western countries just stood by in the first days and did nothing, as they had no hopes for Ukraine surviving for more than a few days. If the Ukrainian public weren’t willing to push back, they would’ve had no chance to stop the Russian advances and their government would’ve collapsed in days, just as both Russia and the West predicted.

It would be a better use of funds to accept territorial concessions

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fled from the occupied territories, and accepting that they will never get their relatives and homes back will be unthinkable for a large part of them, especially after the reports of forced relocations from occupied regions into Russia (including thousands of children) and all the suffering that Putin has brought upon Ukrainians. Maybe they will reach the point of making concessions if they see no hope of retaking the territory. Ultimately this has to be decided by the Ukrainian people.

You said that they are a reactionary government, but you also implied that their reactionary justification to invade is legitimate.

You said you “don’t fully agree” with Russia intervening in the civil war (by shelling kyiv I guess, because theres definitely civil war there). As if they didn’t provoke it in the first place to justify their invasion.

I also wouldn’t expect people who are criticial of war to say that they “don’t fully agree” with Russia waging a war of aggression and commiting mass murder and war crimes in Ukraine, I would expect some actual condemnation of such atrocities.

Yeah, I don’t fully agree with their decision to intervene in the Ukrainian civil war

Of course Russia had nothing to do with the war. They would never fund and support the separatists, or spread anti Ukrainian propaganda amongst the Russian speaking population, because Putin loves democracy and just wants the best for everyone, of course. /s

But the majority of us loves our animals

And when the milk production drops, the vast majority of dairy cows get their throat slit and their bodies sold for profit. I surely wouldn’t treat those that I love that way, but I guess animal farmers just have a very different concept of “loving animals” compared to people who have pets, for example.

The NSDAP had no issues working with Russia, as long as it was in their interest.

I guess we should start barbequing pet dogs then. At least that’s less cruel than factory farms, fwiw.

It would take away breeding ground for human transmittable mutations. With literally billions of animals, mainly in filthy conditions, we just keep rolling the dice every day for a strain that starts a pandemic. We can either try to abolish factory farming, or just hope that the next pandemic won’t be much worse than covid.

Those Russian speaking separatists got heavily influenced by Russian disinformation and propaganda for years in preparation of the invasion, and supported by the Russian armed forces, precisely to have this justification. This is like saying Putin got 88% in the election, so clearly that’s the will of the people. Assuming that authoritarian regimes lead by secret service agents play by the rules of democracy is dangerous.

Imo it’s remarkable how successful they are at spreading their twisted narratives, even in western countries.

It doesn’t make much sense, but conservatives are already losing their minds over the 25g we’re allowed to carry “nooo, we’re enabling drug dealers with those massive quantities”. If they went for 500g at home, there would’ve been a lot more negative press I imagine and it might not have gone through. Maybe it will be adjusted a few years down the line.

BP and Shell only have that much power exacly because people buy fossil fuels from them. If demand would drop, their profits and political power would drop accordingly. As long as we don’t even hold the biggest financiers of these companies responsible, how can anything change? Demand drives supply.

It’s like saying “As long as hitmans exist, I won’t give a shit about the people who pay hitmans, all consumption under capitalism is unethical anyways so anything goes.” As long as we ignore those who actually fund the problem, we won’t be able to fix anything.

the “quality of life” question is rather meaningless, animals that exist in the food supply chain were literally born so they could be turned into food.

And if someone bred humans to be slaves, these would be meant to be slaves, so it would actually be moral to keep them as slaves.

Solid logic. Abolishion was a mistake, guys!

There’s always a supplier and a consumer. The pollution of these 100 corporations is caused on behalf of their customers who fund them in exchange for fossil fuels, directly or indirectly. They are both responsible, it’s 2 sides of the same coin.

Of course, much of this pollution isn’t really avoidable at this point. We can’t have 100% renewable power and electric cars tomorrow. Some really polluting industries will take decades to decarbonize, like steel and cement production. But this makes it even more urgent to adress the low hanging fruit asap, i.e. big sources of pollution that can easily be cut. Private jets are a prime example.

You could say just a few private jet flights or chopping down one single forest won’t make a dent in global carbon emissions, but that doesn’t mean that thousands around the world can keep on doing it indefinitely without consequences for all of us. Especially if they are idols for millions of people, normalizing harm to society that we can’t afford.

A land rover isn’t nearly as polluting and doesn’t drive nearly as far. More importantly, the heart surgeon isn’t a role model in terms of lifestyle aspirations for literally hundreds of millions of followers.

People shouldn’t be judged on a single data point.

It’s not like we’re talking about stealing some sweets from children or something. Climate change just gets worse and worse and worse until we reach net zero co2 emissions. As long as it’s culturally accepted to cause massive amounts of completely unnecessary emissions, we don’t have the slightest chance of fixing this.

The only way a decent person could be doing this is if they were completely uneducated about climate change and their impact as a role model.

Admittedly I don’t know much about her as a person, but how can someone who uses a private jet in 2024 be considered a decent person by any stretch?

Having such a ludicrously unsustainable lifestyle in a climate emergency that will kill millions in just a few decades is a crime against humanity, change my mind.

Much worse for who?

My point is: if police were completely abolished, conservatives and the far right would feel very unsafe and immediately form militias that enforce their values. That would be much worse for everyone who doesn’t share their values, of course.

I get that in many countries, police is badly regulated and you might say that this wouldn’t actually change much, but I’d rather seek more accountability for police, compared to a complete abolishion, leaving a power vaccum that’ll be filled by right wing militias with zero accountability.

Divesting seems good to me though, much of the police is certainly overfunded (due to law and order populism) and does useless shit (like the war on drugs), while education, social workers and programs against poverty are severely underfunded. Changing this would surely help a lot with crime reduction and other issues.

Thanks for the links by the way, I will look more into them when I have more time to see if my concerns regarding abolishion are addressed.

So what’s the alternative to police? Just getting rid of them would just lead to militias taking their place which would be much worse.

I got really fucking tired of being called fucking stupid for buying meat free alternatives.

Sorry that you met condescending assholes. Some people just have the urge to feel superior over others for absolutely silly reasons. The rise of meat alternatives is one of the few things that make me optimistic for the future, along with renewable energy, electric cars and heat pumps. Factory farms are so much worse for the environment and animals, of course we should embrace alternatives to the worst option.

Prices also go down with more competition. There basically wasn’t any market for meat alternatives 10 years ago, now it’s growing quite fast. In 5 years, many of them will likely be cheaper than meat.

People live completely healthy without meat, so how is this relevant? Even if we were biologically adapted to hunting, that doesn’t make it ethical. Ducks are designed to rape, surely that doesn’t make rape ethical. Or does it in your view?

Raising animals for food is not incompatible with caring and making all humanly possible efforts to assure the animals live a good life.

People won’t ever stop buying from factory farms as long as it’s socially acceptable, or cheaper options with a close enough taste become available.

“Nearly 99 percent of farmed animals in the US are factory farmed. There are around 250,000 farms in the US. Every day, 23 million land animals are killed on these farms – around 266 every second”

https://animalequality.org/blog/2022/10/14/factory-farming-facts/

I don’t know a single meat eater that doesn’t eat factory farmed meat, including my former self. Do you really believe that people will suddenly start asking about living conditions in restaurants and supermarkets, pay a higher price, and boycot all factory farmed animal products? Speaking of romantizing. This seems like a complete fantasy to me. The vast majority will always buy the cheapest options they can find, no questions asked.

Defending the notion that systematic exploitation is fine, as long as you stab them “humanely” in the throat, provides the ideological basis for treating animals as products, reducing the cost by treating them as worst as possible. Like most people do right now.

As I see it, the only realistic way to end factory farming is if either plant-based meat alternatives or lab-grown meat are produced on a large scale to become price competitive. Which seems to be where things are going for many meat categories, although customer acceptance still has a long way to go.