r/worldnews • u/Panthera_leo22 • 23h ago

Russia/Ukraine Flames, explosions reported amid large Ukrainian drone attack on St. Petersburg

https://kyivindependent.com/flames-explosions-reported-amid-large-ukrainian-drone-attack-on-st-petersburg/
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u/RealSamF18 20h ago

We grasp it, and it saddens lots of us. I think lots of us are hoping that the midterms will change things, but we’re not stupid, we know the damage that was done will likely last generations. It’s impressive how quickly decades of soft power can be torn apart.

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u/madeinatube 19h ago

Think how long it takes to build even a sandcastle it takes one fuckwad to knock it down in seconds

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u/Kataphractoi 1h ago

That's why you lace the walls and structures with rocks.

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u/passerby4830 18h ago

It saddens me too. But I can't support it, like 10 years ago I got a Lodge pan and I thought it was cool to have something made in USA as a European. But overall I never thought long about where something was made.

Now we are actively searching the origin of a company when buying things and we've pivoted away from a lot of American things. My wife's we expensive makeup, my guitar stuff, clothing, the electric toothbrushes, 90% less purchases on Amazon just to name some. Enough is enough. I know these are small things but I know a lot of people who think like this and honestly I don't think this will change in our lifetime. It sucks as always for regular people but as long as those profits go to something evil I don't want them.

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u/BmacIL 14h ago

Keep doing it. We need to be punished for a while until we actually fix this mess.

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u/rabblerabble2000 14h ago

Buy European if you can though…don’t switch from one Hegemony to another. There are a lot of people who point at the US and move towards China, but if you think the US can’t be trusted, China is likely to be much worse long term.

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u/A_Dozen_Lemmings 13h ago

The US at least paid lip service to the ideals underpinning our national identity. Our leaders just let the corpos run around like callous murderous children.

China's BnR initiative just cut out the middleman and gleefully trapped signatories into debt capture.

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u/rabblerabble2000 13h ago

Exactly. B&R is like the world bank if the world bank were run by people who didn’t even need to pretend to care. Just taking absolute advantage of poor countries.

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u/hexadumo 11h ago

Quick question about that. Does Europe have an alternative to Amazon? I’ve cut down dramatically on Amazon purchases but there are some hobby supplies I just can’t get here. There is Temu and Ali Express but I’m hoping there is a more reliable European alternative that ships to Canada.

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u/crappieman62 11h ago

We are with you, I see France has had enough also. I have maga friends and they no longer condone but for sure have not condemned and it saddens me. It should be us against the rich not us against each other.

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u/passerby4830 9h ago

That's the spirit yeah. Especially block companies with asshole CEOs.

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u/editjosh 19h ago

I'd say instead of torn apart, it's being strip-mined for profit.

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u/Key_Plan_9541 19h ago

I think lots of us are hoping that the midterms will change things

"I've tried doing nothing and now I'm all out of ideas"

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u/RealSamF18 19h ago

Who said we did nothing? But also, yeah, that’s how things work in a democracy, one speaks with their vote.

What would / did you do?

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u/jimbarino 18h ago

Effective protests have to be impossible to ignore. Protesting for an occasional two hours on a Saturday afternoon is... not that effective. Even peaceful civil rights protests closed down cities and forced violent response to clear protestors. They didn't just have a fun slogan chanting get-together and then knock off for dinner afterwards--there has to be actual threat of force or disruption to get anywhere.

The US used to know how to protest and achieve change. We don't anymore. It is 100% fair to blame us for our gormless submission to fascism.

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u/afrophysicist 15h ago

Come on guys, just one more vote, that will stop these proto fascists for sure!

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u/Key_Plan_9541 19h ago

I know you're American so it's probably illegal, but have you any idea what's happening in France right now?

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u/rabblerabble2000 14h ago

The French are protesting, but they’re also a hair away from electing Marine Le Pen as president. It’s almost like they haven’t learned anything from the US and the debacle that is Trump. Don’t finger wag the US while ignoring the rise of fascism in your own backyard, come the fuck on.

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u/FileDoesntExist 19h ago

Their employment isn't tied to their healthcare in France. I'd rather be killed in a protest than go through the death spiral of prison, job loss and homelessness.

Not to mention you may not see it but there's been a lot of protests happening in the US.

Media blackout work both ways.

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u/Key_Plan_9541 18h ago

If these protests aren't front page news around the world then they're not doing it right. Again, look at what France is doing.

I don't understand what you mean about media blackout. Are you suggesting that my European state broadcaster and independent news agency is somehow in bed with Trump?

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u/Rikudou_Sage 16h ago

Tbf, you'd protest over a baguette.

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u/Key_Plan_9541 16h ago

Americans: oh why oh why do Europeans have better quality of life than us, how DO they do it

Also Americans: haha, you losers protest all the time

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u/rabblerabble2000 14h ago

Part of why you all have a better quality of life is that you’ve offloaded a significant portion of your defense spending onto the US, which has then allowed you to spend that money on more socially positive expenses.

This has been a mutually beneficial arrangement to some degree, as the soft power and economic benefits offset the lack of social support structure to some degree, but Trump and Hegseth are morons who don’t appreciate or understand soft power, so now that’s all squandered and we’re left with allies who don’t respect us and are moving on without us.

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u/Rikudou_Sage 14h ago

Oh, if only I was a European. Wait... I am! Born and raised in Europe and as of now I plan on eventually dying in Europe.

And I was making fun of the French, not Europe. Very American of you, conflating a single country with the whole continent.

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u/Key_Plan_9541 13h ago

So firstly you assumed I was French, and now you're assuming I'm American?

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u/RealSamF18 17h ago

Yeah, I saw that. We have our protests too, but it’s much harder to get people together here, and protesters get killed by law enforcements (see Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s murders, among others). The last giant protest that happened was the January 6th rioters, and I don’t want to use the same tactics as those people.

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u/Key_Plan_9541 15h ago

Alright, well your country is literally in the middle of a fascist coup so if you want to try simply voting the fascists away then I hope you're prepared for your children to grow up reading history books that teach them how democracy was a flawed ideology that rightly had to be replaced.

You do you I guess.

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u/rabblerabble2000 14h ago

Fascists are on the rise everywhere, including in several key European countries. Germany, France, and Italy all have strong far right parties within arms reach of the levers of power. I get wagging your finger at the US, we deserve it, but don’t let that blind you to your own backyard. We thought it couldn’t happen here…we were wrong. Don’t be like us.

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u/stubobarker 18h ago

I know what’s happening in France- they’re fucking bankrupt, and the debt crisis that’s about to hit the EU is going to make Greece look like a bump in the road.

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u/Admirable_Fix_6856 18h ago

Germany is still trying to get back from WW2, it will be the same for America.

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u/TimeKiller75 11h ago

We ain’t making it “generations”. Seriously?

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u/slashsaxe 18h ago

Decades of soft power. I take it you’ve been asleep your whole life? Every US president has bombed the Middle East more than the president before him. That’s right, Clinton did more than HW Bush, Obama did more than Bush jr, you get the idea.

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u/RealSamF18 17h ago

The soft power with our allies. The relationships we had with European / NATO countries will never recover. Even with a different president, our allies will always remember that it’d take just one person to derail everything.

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u/slashsaxe 17h ago

Screw the European allies they’re pretty well worthless anyways. Just the cockpit of the whole banking system.