I think it’s really funny that people are seeing this as “factual numbers” when exchange rates are literally market prices driven by currency buyers. The biggest currency buyers are all North Atlantic countries. So the idea that Russia’s ruble has a low exchange rate against USD is not noteworthy in the slightest - what idiot would invest in stores of rubles when their countries are all engaged in economic sanctions that threaten to make those rubles useless to them.
China’s Yuan is also at an all-time low against the USD and it’s not in a hot war with a US proxy. What’s that mean? Is it evidence that the sanctions against Russia are working? Is it evidence that Russia will collapse any day now? The imperial bootlickers will cherrypick literally anything that helps them buoy their sinking narrative so that they can sleep at night. The reality is that the foreign exchange rates are generally set by imperialists (see LIBOR scandal for just how much imperialists manipulate world financial markets and just how little they get prosecuted for it), and that a low RUB-USD rate matters for buying things in USD - which Russia can’t really do because of Western sanctions. So what does it actually matter? The bigger question is what is the RUB exchange rate with its dominant trading partners. It’s been falling against the CNY as well, which is somewhat troubling, but executing deals in yuan with yuan reserves means the exchange rate doesn’t actually matter. Domestically, Russia’s economy is growing with latest estimates expecting growth of 2.5%, because that’s what happens in a war economy.
So to summarize, Russians are seeing purchases in USD become more expensive, but Russian’s can’t make many purchases in USD anymore because of sanctions, the domestic economy is improving and citizens of Russia are getting what they need from their trading partners, and the bigger concern is whether or not purchases from their trading partners are getting more expensive and will that hurt the domestic economy.
So far, we don’t have much evidence of economic distress inside Russia.
you could have just said
“yup, the rouble is fucked”
and saved yourself all that propaganda posting
Why do you even bother to engage in World News if your primary interest is maintaining cognitive dissonance through willful ignorance and the moronic good/evil framing of the world?
Why do you even bother to engage in World News if your primary interest is maintaining cognitive dissonance through willful ignorance and the moronic good/evil framing of the world?
It’s not. My primary interest is to learn, analyze, and understand the world around me. I don’t believe good and evil exist, period. My secondary interest is engaging others to learn from them. My tertiary objective is to engage with others to disabuse them of false beliefs based on my current understanding of the world around me.
Why do you even bother to engage in World News if your primary interest is … the moronic good/evil framing of the world
From the guy that uses “imperialist” in every other sentence. This is especially ironic given that Russia is the one invading and annexing territory.
Yet again, showing that you have no awareness of the world, despite participating in news streams about the world and choosing to engage with the content. What’s wrong with you? We’ve been working with a definition of imperialism for over a century at this point and that definition is not “invading and annexing territory”. The only people who use this definition are people in the imperial core who want to engage in whataboutism every time they get called out for dominating 80% of the world’s people. “Oh, but what about Russia! They invaded a place, they must be imperialist too!” Fucking garbage ignorance.
I use imperialist in every other sentence because you imperialists need it drilled through your skulls, apparently, that in point of historical fact the North Atlantic is the evil empire you keep fantasizing about when you call for the blood of “Russian orcs” or the death of the “brain washed Chinese”. You can’t seem to fathom the idea that the reason BRICS is on the rise is because the entire world is tired of being dominated by the white supremacist minority that rules from the North Atlantic. You refuse to see that white Eurocentric men dominated 80% of the world’s population for multiple centuries and that it’s not ancient history but rather the major force driving contemporary geopolitics. You think Russia invading Ukraine is an act of imperialism but have zero position on the School of the Americas and probably don’t even realize it exists, what it is, or how it spreads Euro-imperialism. You claim Russia and China are fascists when quite literally all fascism that we’ve seen historically has emerged from the white supremacist North Atlantic axis, that the Third Reich was literally emulating and advancing programs they lifted from the USA and that the USA continued those programs well past the end of the war. So yes, I constantly reinforce the point that the North Atlantic are the imperialists in this world, they are the ones who have carved up the entire world into their vassals, markets, and subjects, and that they have been so difficult to resist that extreme measures have been shown to be the only thing that works to resist and fight back against them.
Again, why do you even both engaging in this community if your only goal is to maintain cognitive dissonance by refusing to learn anything, repeating mindless drivel, and fantasizing about the way world works. You don’t need world news for that. You can just watch Prager U videos and get the same effect. And you’d save all of us the headache of having to contend with your deliberate and contented ignorance.
“Oh, but what about Russia! They invaded a place, they must be imperialist too!” Fucking garbage ignorance.
Bruh
imperialist, adjective of, relating to, supporting, or practicing imperialism.
imperialism, noun a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through diplomacy or military force.
You keep saying “cognitive dissonance” but I don’t think you know what that actually means
LOL, fucking typical liberal. Yes, by all means, use a web dictionary to engage in political analysis. It’s totally useful. Why don’t you look up Webster’s definition of “race” and tell me how useful it is when discussing the actual socio-political system of race in its historical context? Saved you the work: it’s worth less than dick.
Imperialism is a complex phenomenon that has been studied extensively and the current best definition we have comes from Lenin’s work on the topic. All other definitions of imperialism are exactly what you described, and that definition is useless in distinguishing between imperialism and anti-imperialism. For example, let’s say the British invade China and take over Hong Kong. That would be imperialism. But by the definition you have provided, if China uses diplomacy or military force to take back Hong Kong that would also be imperialism. The dictionary definition is useless.
Instead of conflating “extending power”, which quite literally every single nation-state in the world does continuously, the shortest definition of imperialism that we have arrived at is the monopoly stage of capitalism. The analysis is pretty thorough on this topic and no one in the last century has managed to identify significant flaws in the analysis that would require a new definition. And you would know this if you actually engaged in this topic instead of just doing shit like pointing at dictionary definitions as though you’re making an argument and then accusing people who disagree with you of whatever it is they accuse you of.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is quite literally the predicted response of the US extending their power and influence through diplomacy and military force. The awareness that NATO establishing nuclear capabilities in Ukraine was a red line for Russian national security was not only understood by all of the Western powers but was openly talked about. When Gorbachev is talking with Clinton about the dismantling of the USSR and the need for Russian security, Clinton assures Gorbachev that NATO won’t expand but then immediately engages in talks internally to build a strategy to get NATO into Ukraine. It was well known for 30 years that Russia would eventually be forced to launch an attack if NATO kept expanding.
What is that NATO expansion if not the extension of power and influence through diplomacy and military force? (you know, like bombing the last socialist country in Europe with a defensive alliance dropping depleted uranium bombs on developed cities under the pretext of the world’s first ever “humanitarian” war) If that’s not imperialism to you, but Russia finally pushing back is, that is fucking textbook cognitive dissonance.
So even if we take your garbage definition which is completely useless for understanding the world (but maybe useful for 7th graders who need to understand a word in a novel they have to read for a book report), you’re still the one exhibiting the cognitive dissonance here.
Ok, settle down there, Ivan. You have other posts to spread your apologist views to. Don’t let this one detain you.
LOL. See, this is what I’m talking about. The only way people can disagree with you is if they are paid Russian shills. It’s amazing that you don’t see how this reflects on the weakness of your position. It’s unimaginable to you that someone just like you, raised in the imperial core, educated in public schools, with a 4-year degree, who listened to the same radio and TV, watched the same movies, and read the same literature, dated in the same cities, and experienced all the same shared traumas as you could come to a different conclusion than you on this topic. So to maintain your fragile beliefs you have to disengage from the real world and enter into a fantasy realm where all of your opponents are paper dolls being managed by your imagined mortal enemy to push uninformed and evil narratives. You just can’t handle the idea that someone who was in college thinking about how they could build a startup and if only the government would deregulate more, and yada yada that someone like this could actually study world history and end up believing something different than you. It’s a fragile world view you have.
The only way people can disagree with you is if they are paid Russian shills
You say that as though lemmygrad and hexbear posters aren’t constantly accusing anyone they disagree with of being FBI plants or Western shills lol
So far you’ve used a whole shitload of words to not actually disprove anything that anyone in this thread is asserting, while throwing strawmen around like they’re confetti lol - in fact, you’ve actually agreed with the only claim this thread is making
what idiot would invest in stores of rubles when their countries are all engaged in economic sanctions that threaten to make those rubles useless to them.
But keep throwing around strawmen like
you keep fantasizing about when you call for the blood of “Russian orcs” or the death of the “brain washed Chinese”
I’m sure it’ll prove your point. So far on Lemmy (and yes I know the situation was different on Reddit, but we all left that shithole for a reason) the only references to “Russian Orcs” has been from lemmygrad and hexbear users who are pretending that it’s common terminology among all Ukraine supporters. FWIW I totally agree with you that calling Russian Soldiers Orcs is both counterproductive and inherently unempathetic and even evil. My heart goes out to every Russian conscript who has been forced to march to Ukraine, either to die a pointless death, or to kill other humans all for Putin’s idiotic ambitions. But the fact that Russian Conscripts are people too doesn’t mean that Ukraine should just cede its sovereignty so that they don’t have to kill the soldiers that Russia is using to try and take away their independence.
You just can’t handle the idea that someone who was in college thinking about how they could build a startup and if only the government would deregulate more, and yada yada that someone like this could actually study world history and end up believing something different than you. It’s a fragile world view you have.
It’s hugely ironic that you keep saying how other people are too fragile to accept that other’s might have different world views, while showing yourself to be totally unwilling to consider anyone elses point of view on this subject. No one is telling you what you can and can’t believe. If you choose to believe that Russia is the lesser of two evils in this conflict, despite objectively being the one who invaded the other, then by all means go ahead. But don’t act like anyone who disagrees with you must just not understand the situation. Presuming that everyone who doesn’t think the same way as you is just incapable of seeing the truth is a sure sign of a small mind.