Huh, so I looked up the top 100 arms manufacturers in the world. 41% of them are the from the US, with the entire top 5 being from the US. The next biggest are china with 8%, and the UK with 7%.
Slightly off-topic but I really enjoyed the way Horizon Zero Dawn (spoilers ahead) illustrated the military industrial complex with Ted Faro. The dude was so convinced he was right about everything that not only did he help create the deadliest legion of machines ever conceived, he also deleted all knowledge acquired by humanity because he fucked up so bad that he thought anyone less smart than him (read:everyone else) would fuck up just as bad if not worse with the same knowledge. I imagine most real military contractors are lead by people who are similarly humble
That pissed me off so much. I really wanted the world to gain access to APOLLO
(I'm not saying i thought the story was bad, rather that it was good and I was very invested)
(please don't spoil forbidden west for me in case that comes up)
It's none of those. General Dynamics produces the humble 155mm artillery shell. It's not flashy but artillery has killed more people than any other weapon in modern warfare.
Dunno about China but surely AKs being the small arms of choice for many countries, rebles, freedom fighters, terrorists and partisans of every flavour must put Kalashnikov Concern pretty high up there.
Did you want me to say Norinco? They only have a license to make AKs but I don't think that should count or it gets real hard to calculate what arms company did what.
I mean it's a pretty academic question. Do the merchants of war drive global conflict, or are they necessary for national defense? Or is the issue more nuanced?
Russia historically makes up about half the world's arms trade. Though that has declined in recent years due to Ukraine. So who is the chicken and who is the egg?
Fwiw, I tend to agree that arms manufacturers do play a role in driving global conflict, but it's also clearly A responding to B and B responding to A.
This has also changed significantly since 2022 since Russia has effectively stopped exporting weapons. They used to be pretty close to the US in terms of total exports
Ever since Ukraine's February revolution, the Kremlin has characterised the new leaders in Kiev as a "fascist junta" made up of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, set on persecuting, if not eradicating, the Russian-speaking population.
This is demonstrably false. Far-right parties failed to pass a 5% barrier to enter parliament, although if they had banded together, and not split their vote, they would have probably slipped past the threshold.
Lol your own sources are telling you that you talk BS
Edit: found another one lol
The odious Russian media tried to paint Ukraine as a land of Nazis, though that is patently wrong. Ukraine has a thriving Jewish community, and its far-right is still on the fringe. It’s the same in America.
The fascist issue is not a biggest concern than in Germany, US, France, and certainly not than in Russia. Of course every fascist must be fought, but it's easy to denounce far-right in other countries. In the hearth of capitalism, a consistent anti-imperialist position shall fight the imperialism state. I'm not fan of the dude, but that pretty basics leninism
About "nazi" that came to the west, it's true, but your examples are very bad. Yea every male in germany during the 3rd Reich have to join the army. Of could they could desert, and having their family and their own life threaten, but that's not make them nazi. None of them were in the nazi party or one of its organisation (like the SS). Adolf Heusinger may be another case, being a general is not the same responsibility and agentivity
This a bad job because there is a lot of example of fascists kept at position of power in many countries, including the occupied germany and the french vichists.
This lead to fascists laws and institutions being kept in those countries (some brigades dedicated to kill resistance converted in "anticriminal brigade" for example), and being used against decolonization.
TL;DR you could demonstrate nazification of western countries, but in repeating russia propaganda, you fail to do so.
M8, russkiland tells all of us "ukraine nazi:C" because they fought and freed themself from a form of russian occupation. The moron who was kicked out in 2014 by the ukrainian people recieved a lot of money from russia to be their puppet state, like belarus is right now, but the people didn't like to be such a country and fought for their freedom. That's why vatnikstan invaded crimea and the donbas to keep their little puppet at their side, that's why they kill and torture those who are innocent and just want to live in peace.
I, for one, am shocked, shocked that defenders of Russia are still using the same easily disproven lies to justify invading, occupying, and murdering a neighboring country.
It's not like Russia has a history of lying about its military operations in Ukraine or anything, right?
Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big DealOn the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
"Defense" is when you aid the overthrow of a government to replace it with a fascist one that kills eastern Ukrainians like in Donbass, DPR, LPR, and Crimea
Then they wonder why Crimeans overwhelming support Russia against the post-2014 fascist coup gov in Ukraine
Wow, I Wonder why everyone that's left in the regime that deports and persecutes dissenters says they are in support of that regime?
Ukraine never invaded anybody. Giving them weapons so they can throw out the people invading them, taking their land and molesting their people is a good thing. Russia has clearly shown that the only way to get rid of the plague that is Russian soldiers on foreign soil is to kill them. That's why we have this war that Russia has chosen to engage in, and which Russia can choose to withdraw from at any time. That's why Russians are dying by the hundreds of thousands.
Out of honest curiosity: Whats wrong with sopuli.xyz? I literally just picked a random instance when I joined Lemmy, and have never heard anything special about this instance.
Maybe because it's the instance that hosts the largest pro fascist-coup gov community. Everything I've seen from it at least seems to enforce that stereotype
It's a shame that people who say they support "Ukraine" usually mean the 2014 fascist coup gov instead of the Ukrainian breakaway regions resisting it.
I was more thinking when Russia invaded and tried to encircle Kyiv and whatnot. But yeah, when you fight against an attacker, it's defence. It's a general term rather than a value position.
Yeah, the famous fascists that are actively working hard to join the EU, which we've seen so clearly the past decade just loves having fascist states in its ranks. You know, the fascist government that had an actual election as late as 2019 where southern and eastern regions largely voted for the person that won.
Notice how there was actually a change of power in that election - a known hallmark of fascist states.
You know, the fascist government that had an actual election as late as 2019 where southern and eastern regions largely voted for the person that won.
It’s too bad that actor who used to play president on TV and had zero actual political experience got steamrolled by the fascists once he got in office.
When did he get steamrolled? When he ensured that corrupt people were sentenced by a court before being jailed, or when he applied to join the famously pro-fascist EU?
They outlawed starting a conversation in Russian. It was criminal for a business not first say something in Ukrainian. Like, imagine if Arizona tried to pass a law that criminalized conducting business in Spanish.
It's defense because the US military industrial complex is "defending" its profit margins by creating instability far enough away that it won't affect them, but that they can profit off of
I remember back in 2014 when even Redditors could tell the solution was to have Eastern Ukraine be a separate state so the coup gov wouldn't be killing them for resisting. That's what the people in the DPR and LPR were trying to do and were being bombed by the fascist state for it. At least Crimeans are free from it now ig.
It's sad, but countries like Russia show us very clearly why nations that want peace need to prepare for war.
I would love to not need to spend a cent on our military, or weapons manufacturing, but the hard reality is very clearly that if we aren't capable of mass producing weapons, we'll likely be invaded and killed.
That's a major part of the issue Europe is facing now: We've scaled down weapons production since the 90's, and now that we suddenly need millions of artillery shells it takes time to rebuild production capacity.
Hopefully Russia gets the picture soon, that we'll keep scaling up until every Russian invader is gone, and we can go back to not spending money on war...
Russian invasion has been a goddamn goldmine to weapon manufacturers. Not only those selling to Ukraine but also got a lot of European countries to re-arm and restart domestic production.
Yup, who would have though that Russia invading their neighbour suddenly caused the entirety of western Europe to start the largest investments in military and weapons manufacturing since the cold war?
Looking at the results of this war so far (major expansion of NATO in the North, massively increased military spending in all of NATO, massively increased size of the Ukrainian military), you would almost think Putins goal was something completely different than preventing NATO expansion and "de-militarizing" Ukraine.
It's almost like the best way of preventing your neighbours from building huge militaries and joining alliances is by cooperating with them and helping them feel safe, rather than threatening, coercing and bombing them.
Lol at the people downvoting this like that isn't exactly what happened: NATO had wanted Finland to join for years, but they didn't want to join, for fear of provoking Russia. Putin shows the world that appeasement doesn't work, and Finland joins in a heartbeat.
I actually hadn't realised that yet, thanks for pointing it out, I thought I was going crazy with the amount of people suddenly supporting Russian invaders
Induced demand -- the production of weapons necessitates the use of weapons in order to keep shares from crashing. Like a shoe factory regularly changing the design and fashion to keep from flooding the market, blood is spilled to keep the 401Ks safe.
Welcome to the Second Cold War, you've been here along.
Amazing, a century latter the blame is still squarely placed on Russia. Those people must not be capable of self-determination, am I right my good Cold Warrior? Good thing we had this stockpile of depleted uranium, by jingo! So what if it leaches into the groundwater? Canadian mining firms have been poisoning Ukrainian groundwater for decades now! What's a little rare-earth-elements between allies, amiright?
Maybe Putler should stop attacking and invading free countries? I am sure the blame would lessen. Also, less raping in the invaded territories would go a long way, I guess.
Yeah yeah, you see the individual and not the historical pattern.
Isn't it funny that the US keeps doing this? The presidents are incidental, flitting in and out of office with the whim of the public. But the conflicts? Those last. Nuclear rockets parked in Yugoslavia one century, flooding Ukraine with weapons the next. You know children in Vietnam are, to this day, born with napalm induced complications?
Doesn't this all ring a little too familiar to you? Do you think maybe our grandparents had cute little nicknames for Khrushchev, comparing him to Hitler, when they were our age?
Boeing has since been expanding who they kill to include passengers on their commercial airplanes along with whistleblowers. Can't say they're not trying.
