If Ukraine falls or is forced to give up territory it’s going to set a terrible precedence that will be a green light for dictators to try taking more land through war. The end result is going to be an insurmountable amount of needless deaths and way more money spent than the cost of supporting Ukraine now. In fact even if we ignore other negative ripple effects caused by Ukraine loosing we still see that supporting Ukraine now is half the cost of letting Russia win (source: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/65257 )
But you, yes you have the power help stop Russia’s evil war with just a few minutes of your time. They say that a grain of rice can tip a scale, the email you send or the phone call you make could be like putting the final grain of rice in the balance scale that tips the scale in Ukraine’s favor.
All you need to do is try contacting politicians in your country and asking that they do whatever they can to support Ukraine. Whether it’s sending aid, weapons, money or anything, it will help. For the US you can follow this guide here for how to contact them: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials. The process of contacting politicians in your country may vary but I would suspect it to be pretty straightforward, just dial a number, send them a letter or an email. Some politicians may even still have a fax machine if you’re into that. But no matter what I suspect you’ll find sending them a message easier than you thought.
In addition while you’re contacting them why not consider bringing up these topics that could also really help Ukraine:
-
Teach students how to recognize disinformation, rage-bait, foreign propaganda operations and cognitive warfare operations. From my research Finland is leading the way with this. This is a good short article about what Finland is doing about disinformation: https://finland.fi/life-society/educated-decisions-finnish-media-literacy-deters-disinformation/ I hope more schools can do something similar.
-
Increase in cybersecurity and crackdown on organized crime and corruption. Have you heard about a company being hacked with ransomware? If they pay where does the money go? The answer often time ends up being Russia and if not it’s still going to some other criminal group that for sure doesn’t deserve it. Organized and white collar crime can sometimes end up leading back to Russia so more emphasis on this can ultimately help stop money and sanctioned parts from making it back into Russia. It’s believed that some hackers are either part of the Russian government or have their backing so these ransom payments may be funding the war.
-
Faster transition to renewable energy. Russia’s big export is fossil fuels. They use the money to fund the war. The less demand for their products the better. Demand a fast as possible transition to renewable energy as possible. Also consider getting solar or installing a heat pump for your home especially if you plan to live there for a long time. Note that solar doesn’t have to be complicated. Some countries allow for balcony solar which is a great way to get started with solar.
I guess you mean precedence.
100% true, if USA and NATO hadn’t put those stupid limitations on Ukraine to not attack into Russian territory or attack oil infrastructure for 3 years, Ukraine could have done what they are doing now a lot sooner, and undermined the Russian oil industry, making it impossible for Russia to afford the war to continue.
And it’s true.
Overall good points IMO. 👍
I’m from Denmark, and I’m proud that our entire parliament supports Ukraine, and our government is among the most active in supporting Ukraine, and the population overwhelmingly supports the government in this.
Obviously the country with proportional representation supports Ukraine in aid the most percentage wise.
Canada would be doing much more if we didn’t have the obsolete first-past-the-post enabling selfish politicians who didn’t even win the majority of the vote in their own riding.
I’m surprised there isn’t cross party support for Ukraine in Canada. You have a similar system to us in the UK. Here the only party that doesn’t support Ukraine is Reform, the Kremlin mouthpiece party who only have 4 MPs.
Canada has a similar problem to the US, may not as bad but still tons of Russian propaganda. In fact on Reddit it’s really bad according to: https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1hsfxmr/journalists_rachel_gilmore_luke_lebrun_shows_that/. The thread alleges that multiple sub-reddits are under Russian influence. In addition they also have similar propaganda outlets like we have Fox News and Newsmax. For example Canada has “Rebel news” (I put both words in quotes because it’s not really news and being a bootlicker for foreign dictators doesn’t make you a rebel, it makes you an idiot). This is a must see video about Rebel news. A former employee exposes the propaganda tactics they use: https://bsky.app/profile/peipolitical.bsky.social/post/3lnamb4sva22f
First past the post is undemocratic IMO. It tends to result in 2 party systems, where both parties tend to become bad options.
Every system of voting has negatives. First past the post has issues, but it is still massively better than what most people have.
Thank you for catching that mistake! I used spell check but clicked the wrong word. It’s fixed now.
Good point about all the arbitrary limitations, I really wish they didn’t do that either.
Yes, Denmark is a great model for support. I’m speculating because I didn’t read this anywhere but I wonder if at some level they understand that a Russian victory is a green light to other dictators to steal land which could make Trump more likely to try invading Canada or Greenland. I will mention I believe one of the reasons Trump made those threats to normalize stealing territory from other countries and to help Putin.
Also on the topic of Denmark and Greenland I can’t help but mention how much I’m deeply ashamed and strongly resent the way my country is threatening Greenland and Canada, I’m really really sorry for this and wish there is more that I could do to help stop it.
We absolutely do, and did from the start, way before Trump threatened with invading Greenland and Canada.
USA has been a big disappointment in this situation even under Biden, but with Trump the disappointment is complete.
Just as you feel ashamed for the actions of Trump, I also feel sorry for all the non crazy Americans that are suffering through the political insanity that exist in USA.
As I see it, USA as a country is mentally ill, and it’s not just Trump, it’s the general population that elected him.
Of course that doesn’t mean everybody, but just like cancer can kill a person, even though not all cells in the body are cancerous, so has USA as a country gone crazy, because a sufficiently big part of the population has.
I can’t even begin to imagine how it must be as a sane person to live in USA right now? Especially considering I’m living in Denmark that is one of the worlds best democracies, and we are in EU, surrounded by neighbors that also are strong supporters of democracy, international law and human rights.
All I can say is best wishes to you, in the hope that USA comes to its senses, but I must say, the way things are going, my hopes are not great.
Thank you so much for responding with so much understanding.
I can only speak for myself because everyone will likely have different views but for me it’s terrifying especially for people who’ve read history and know that they could one day be repressed if things get even worse. It has a chilling effect and might be part of why you don’t see as much resistance as you’d expect.
The cancer analogy is great! Hopefully we can beat the cancer before it beats us, thank you so much for your best wishes!
I have always followed USA closely, both regarding culture business and politics. In the 70’s as a child/teen, I really admired USA and everything looked so promising. American heroes were the best heroes back then.
It’s very disappointing to me that it hasn’t turned out better, all the good ideals used to be there, and USA has so much culture.
Europeans that claim USA doesn’t have culture, seem to forget that USA is the biggest exporter by far of cultural content.
I thought that when Bush was elected the second time, it would be a lesson to the American population, so I kind of gave up hope for USA already first time Trump was elected, because he was so obviously way way worse than Bush. Of course Americans don’t have the luxury of just giving up, without having to live with the consequences and without hope.
But people like Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel and Bezos and of Course Trump need to go, and there needs to be a limit to how much money and power an individual or a family like can have, like how the Koch Brothers ruined so much. Also there must be a limit to how much power a single company can have. At least that’s my opinion.
Totally agree with you. Those ideals you mention have been systematically undermined by right-wing/conservative administrations in our government and even some mistakes made by Democrats. It goes back farther than George W. Bush and Trump. Just to name a few:
Richard Nixon - Vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act that would have given us what many other countries. Launched the war on drugs and mass incarceration. The Powell Memorandum and Roger Ailes were results of the Nixon administration that really ended up hurting our country far more than I think anyone would have expected. The goal was if another conservative president was corrupt they would not get booted out like Nixon was. Also Roger Stone who was involved in Nixon’s campaign was really involved especially in Trump’s first campaign.
Ronald Regan - Helped undermine the middle class and start transferring wealth to the rich. There are so many graphs where things start to decline under Ronald Regan. Not to mention he sold weapons to Iran to fund the Contra.
Bill Clinton - Sure he’s way better than Bush or Trump but he did pave the way towards media consolidation. We are seeing the effects of this today as the Ellisons buy up media companies for the purposes of turning the companies into right-wing propaganda machines.
Personally I see the victory of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter as the turning point, but you make good points about it already happening under Nixon. But at least Nixon was removed for Water Gate, while Reagan came out of the Iran Contra affair completely unscathed.
As I see it, Jimmy Carter may have been the best president USA ever had, he had the right foresight about sustainability symbolized by the solar panels he put up on the White House, and he warned about consumerism, and was 100% a decent human being.
When USA elected Ronald Reagan instead, they abandoned all those values, very much like they did when electing Trump. An obvious malignant narcissists, the most dangerous personal disorder that exist!
And yes the media is a huge part of the problem too, that was already extremely obvious under Bush, where in the beginning there were opposition to a war in Iraq based on false intelligence, that was decidedly contrary to what the UN observers reported. But the media turned 100% one sided to support it, and even questioning it became anti American!
American news media are generally pretty bad, an example of that was when John Stewart on his comedy show provided more accurate news than the actual news! Also like him or not, the firing of Keith Olbermann was a 100% political decision, and American media has systematically weeded out news sources they consider too anti Republican.
Where USA is now is a very sad turn to where we were headed in the 70’s. We do have a bit of the same problem in EU, but nearly as bad, but abandoning traditional values do happen under the guise of pragmatism. Even here in Social Democratic Denmark, the protection of the week is not nearly as strong as it used to be.
Sorry to point it out, but the US is now threatening the whole of Europe in its latest foreign strategy report, not just Greenland and Canada.