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liberalsarecool · 2 months ago

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I owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency and am still exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than:

• when he incited an insurrection against the government,

• mismanaged a pandemic that killed over a million Americans

• separated children from their families

• lost those children in the bureaucracy

• tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church

• tried to block all Muslims from entering the country

• got impeached

• got impeached again

• had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history

• pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden

• fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia

• bragged about firing the FBI director on TV

• took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community

• diverted military funding to build his wall

• caused the longest government shutdown in US history

• called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate”

• lied nearly 40,000 times

• banned transgender people from serving in the military

• ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions

• vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers

• refused to release his tax returns

• increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion

• had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history

• called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers

• coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist

• refused to concede the 2020 election

• hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House

• walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl

• called neo-Nazis “very fine people”

• suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID

• abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey

• pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans

• incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic

• withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords

• withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal

• withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances

• insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter

• pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op

• failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies

• called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries

• called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation”

• claimed that he single-handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere

• forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader

• believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

• berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe

• suggested the US should buy Greenland

• colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges

• repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people”

• claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases

• violated the emoluments clause

• thought that Nambia was a country

• told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public

• called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution

• nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet

• nominated a corrupt head of the EPA

• nominated a corrupt head of HHS

• nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department

• nominated a corrupt head of the USDA

• praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies

• refused to allow the presidential transition to begin

• insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death

• spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president

• falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote

• called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser”

• falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year

• considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions

• mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID

• locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones

• used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus”

• hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser

• pardoned several of his shady associates

• gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories

• got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!)

• had a Secretary of State who called him a moron

• forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history

• botched the COVID vaccine rollout

• tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him

• charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties

• constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate

• claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear

• called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas”

• used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise

• opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling

• got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers

• claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US

• ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings

• blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining

• redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle

• got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters”

• threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution

• botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

• threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them

• pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes

• thought that the Virgin islands had a President

• drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane

• allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing

• rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos

• pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID

• rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers

• held blatant campaign rallies at the White House

• tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man

• refused to attend his successors’ inauguration

• nominated the worst Education Secretary in history

• threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted

• attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci

• promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t)

• allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues

• struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble

• called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ”

• threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders

• went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic

• claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

• seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution

• demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director

• praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles

• completely gutted the Voice of America

• placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service

• claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower

• suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country

• suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public

• overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported

• reduced the number of refugees the US accepts

• insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames

• gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address

• named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties

• eliminated the White House office of pandemic response

• used soldiers as campaign props

• fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him

• demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade

• hired a shit ton of white nationalists

• politicized the civil service

• did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government

• falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts

• claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won

• insulted reporters of color

• insulted women reporters

• insulted women reporters of color

• suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs

• attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him

• summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election

• spent countless hours every day watching Fox News

• refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas

• hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer

• tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him

• acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney

• attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault

• held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present

• didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media

• stopped holding press briefings for months at a time

• “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power

• led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform

• claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers

• tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course

• suggested that the government nuke hurricanes

• suggested that wind turbines cause cancer

• said that he had a special aptitude for science

• fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure

• blurted out classified information to Russian officials

• tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida

• fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban

• hired Stephen Miller

• openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them

• interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel

• abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war

• tried to get Russia back into the G7

• held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden

• seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive

• lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated

• falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t

• shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies

• still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan

• still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks"

• forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID

• told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”

• fucked up the Census

• withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic

• did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,” allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act

• seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican

• stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win

• constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump

• claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened

• said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake

• claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him

• claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President

• created a commission to whitewash American history

• retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain

• claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there

• hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims

• had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others

• bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties

• apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House

• stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians

• falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police

• said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about

• tried to rescind protection from DREAMers

• gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic

• tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax

• said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states

• deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented

• claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln

• touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all

• retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile

• forced through security clearances for his family

• suggested that police officers should rough up suspects

• suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs

• tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender

• suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher

• nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy

• retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event

• hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags

• accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address

• claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia

• mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault

• obsessed over low-flow toilets

• ordered the re-release of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release

• called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek)

• hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech

• took advice from the MyPillow guy

• claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists

• said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure

• never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign

• falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent

• announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest

• insulted the leader of Canada

• insulted the leader of France

• insulted the leader of Britain

• insulted the leader of Germany

• insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!)

• falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues

• blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually

• continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

• said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked

• left a NATO summit early in a huff

• stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of five knows not to do that

• called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary

• refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise

And a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember .

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mapsontheweb · 6 months ago

Photo

A breakdown of the “Current Cold War” alliances/allegiance structures.

This is including formalized military alliances, partnerships and coalitions as well as informal security relations as well.

by powerfulcountries

With the six primary “blocs” showcased above, we have split the blocs into two primary overarching blocs. We are fully aware that this is an oversimplified breakdown of alliance and allegiance structures, however this is what we felt was the easiest means to showcase such.

“Wild Card” countries are those who have increased complex statuses and/or have strong security ties ‘with powers in multiple competing blocs.

While the Indian and Saudi blocs are not necessarily aligned on their own, we placed them in the same overarching bloc due to them having increased overlap with the western bloc compared to other blocs.

The same premise as above goes for the Russian and Chinese blocs. Russia and China have distinct foreign policy and grand strategy goals (that may even put them at odds on occasion) but their overlapping goals against the western blocs have placed them into the same primary category alongside the Iran bloc.

We are aware that other countries can potentially be added to a bloc that otherwise weren't, so be sure to let us know what countries should have been included and why.

Remember, the governments and grand strategies of a country may not necessarily align with the people of said country. Alliances and allegiances can simply be for economic and/or strategic reasonings rather than cultural and/or historic reasonings.

#maps #powerfulcountries #igsourced #geopolitics #second cold war

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pissvortex · 5 months ago

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Imperialism under Biden/Harris:

- Started war with Russia over natural gas

- Sponsors genocide in Palestine

- Continued attempts to overthrow social democrats in Latin America

- Continued sabre rattling against China and the DPRK

Imperialism under Trump:

- Continued sabre rattling against China (except Trump seems fine not propping up Taiwan)

- Continued attempts to overthrow social democrats in Latin America

- Assassinated Qasem Soleimani

- Bombed Syria

So, overall, it's two spur of the moment bombings versus two entire wars. Plus Trump negotiated with the DPRK and wants to dismantle NATO. For idiotic reasons, obviously, but he's objectively the anti-imperialist option.

you seem serious so: You have a very juvenile understanding of imperialism that seemingly only includes military action. Even if Trump did dismantle NATO it would not change America’s status as the finance capital / usury state of the world - I see no reason to doubt what he says openly is his intention when he says this move would actually increase American financial domination. That is imperialism, albeit a deviation from the current neoliberal global partnership imperialism because Trump is an American exceptionalist and (perhaps naively) believes in total American domination. He doesn’t really care about traditional conservative/liberal notions of diplomacy or world relations, he just likes watching the numbers go up. Every time there was a dip in the stock market he would just pump it with a trillion more dollars from the federal reserve. He correctly identifies America as the world’s money printer, and since the world has a U.S. currency standard, he has no reason to fear this backfiring. It’s why he’s pursuing this idiotic tariff idea, he knows the rest of the world will take a lot of punishment to continue to be “in” on American finance and he can make his petit bourgeois constituents happy with free money for hare-brained small business. He leaves the actual big finance and megacorporations alone and lets small businesses live in this fantasy realm of free government funding forever. It’s like a fake economy for complacency layered under the real one. This is not anti-imperialist, it’s petit-bourgeois populism and it isn’t better by any means.

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mightyflamethrower · 1 year ago

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“Name me a single objective we’ve ever set out to accomplish that we’ve failed on. Name me one, in all of our history. Not one!”

-President Joe Biden, August 16, 2023

Joe Biden in one of his now accustomed angry “get off my grass” moods dared the press to find just one of his policies/objectives that has not worked. Silence followed.

Perhaps it was polite to say nothing, given even the media knows almost every enacted Biden policy has failed.

Here is a summation of what he should instead apologize for.

Biden in late summer 2021 sought a 20th anniversary celebration of 9/11 and the 2001 subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. He wished to be the landmark president that yanked everyone out of Afghanistan after 20 years in country. But the result was the greatest military humiliation of the United States since the flight from Vietnam in 1975.

Consider the ripples of Biden’s disaster. U.S. deterrence was crippled worldwide. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea almost immediately began to bluster or return to their chronic harassment of U.S. and allied ships and planes. We left thousands of allied Afghans to face Taliban retribution, along with some Western contractors.

Biden abandoned a $1 billion embassy, and a $300 million remodeled Bagram airbase strategically located not far from China and Russia, and easily defensible. Perhaps $50 billion in U.S. weaponry and supplies were abandoned and now find their way into the international terrorist mart.

All our pride flags, our multimillion gender studies programs at Kabul University, and our George Floyd murals did not just come to naught, but were replaced by the Taliban’s anti-homosexual campaigns, burkas, and detestation of any trace of American popular culture.

Vladimir Putin sized up the skedaddle. He collated it with Biden’s unhinged quip that he would not get too excited if Putin just staged a “minor” invasion of Ukraine. He remembered Biden’s earlier request to Putin to modulate Russian hacking to exempt a few humanitarian American institutions. Then Russia concluded of our shaky Commander-in-Chief that he either did not care or could do nothing about another Russian invasion.

The result so far is more than 500,000 dead and wounded in the war, a Verdun-stand-off along with fortified lines, the steady depletion of our munitions and weapon stocks, and a new China/Russia/Iran/North Korean axis, with wink and nod assistance from NATO Turkey.

Biden blew up the Abraham accords, nudged Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States over to the dark side of Iran, China, and Russia. He humiliated the U.S. on the eve of the midterms by callously begging the likes of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil that he had damned as unclean at home and cut back its production. In Bidenomics, instead of producing oil, the president begs autocracies to export it to us at high prices while he drains the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for short-term political advantage.

Biden deliberately alienated Israel by openly interfering in its domestic politics. He pursued the crackpot Iran Deal while his special Iranian envoy was removed for disclosing classified information.

No one can explain why Biden ignored the Chinese balloon espionage caper, kept mum about the engineered Covid virus that escaped the Wuhan lab, said not a word about a Chinese biolab discovered in rural California, and had his envoys either bow before Chinese leaders or take their insults in silence—other than he is either cognitively challenged or leveraged by his decade-long grifting partnership with his son Hunter.

Yet another Biden’s legacy will be erasing the southern border and with it, U.S. immigration law. Over seven million aliens simply crossed into the U.S. illegally with Biden’s tacit sanction—without audits, background checks, vaccinations, and COVID testing, much less English fluency, skills, or high-school diplomas.

Biden’s only immigration accomplishment was to render the entire illegal sanctuary city movement a cruel joke. Given the flood, mostly rich urban and vacation home dwellers made it very clear that while they fully support millions swarming into poor Latino communities of southern Texas and Arizona, they do not want any illegal aliens fouling their carefully cultivated nests.

Biden is mum about the 100,000 fentanyl deaths from cartel-imported and Chinese-supplied drugs across his open border. He seems to like the idea that Mexican President Obrador periodically mouths off, ordering his vast expatriate community to vote Democratic and against Trump.

Despite all the pseudo-blue collar dissimulation about Old Joe Biden from Scranton, he has little empathy for the working classes. Indeed, he derides them as chumps and dregs, urges miners to learn coding as the world covets their coal, and studiously avoids getting anywhere near the toxic mess in East Palestine, Ohio, or so far the moonscape on Maui.

Bidenomics is a synonym for printing up to $6 billion dollars at precisely the time post-Covid consumer demand was soaring, while previously dormant supply chains were months behind rebooting production and transportation. Biden is on track to increase the national debt more than any one-term president.

In Biden’s weird logic, if he raised the price of energy, gasoline, and key food staples 20-30 percent since his inauguration without a commensurate rise in wages, and then saw the worst inflation in 40 years occasionally decline from record highs one month to the next, then he “beat inflation.”

But the reason why more than 60 percent of the nation has no confidence in Bidenomics is because it destroyed their household budgets. Gas is nearly twice what it was in January 2021. Interest rates have about tripled. Key staple foods are often twice as costly—meat, vegetables, and fruits especially.

Biden has ended through his weaponized Attorney General Merrick Garland the age-old American commitment to equal justice under the law. The FBI, DOJ, CIA, and IRS are hopelessly politically compromised. Many of their bureaucrats serve as retrieval agents for lost Biden family incriminating laptops, diaries, and guns. In sum, Biden criminalized opposing political views.

Biden has unleashed the administrative state for the first time in history to destroy the Republican primary front runner and his likely opponent. His legacy will be the corruption of U.S. jurisprudence and the obliteration of the American reputation for transparent permanent government that should be always above politics, bribery, and corruption.

If in the future, an on-the-make conservative prosecutor in West Virginia, Utah, or Mississippi wishes to make a national name, then he has ample precedent to indict a Democrat President for receiving bad legal advice, questioning the integrity of an election, or using social media to express doubt that the new non-Election-Day balloting was on the up-and-up, or supposedly overvaluing his real estate.

The Biden family’s decade-long family grifting will likely expose Joe Biden as the first president in U.S. history who fitted precisely the Constitution’s definition of impeachment and removal—given his “high crimes and misdemeanors” appear “bribery”-related. If further evidence shows he altered U.S. foreign policy in accordance with the wishes from his benefactors in Ukraine, China, or Romania, then he committed constitutionally-defined “treason” as well.

Defunding the police, and pandemics of exempted looting, shoplifting, smashing, and grabbing, and carjacking merit no administrative attention. Nor does the ongoing systematic destruction of our blue bicoastal cities, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. All that, along with the disasters in East Palestine or Maui are out of sight, out of mind from a day at the beach at Biden’s mysteriously purchased nearly 6,000 square-foot beachfront mansion.

Biden ran on Barack Obama-like 2004 rhetoric (“Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America).”

And like Obama, he used that ecumenical sophistry to gain office only to divide further the U.S. No sooner than he was elected, we began hearing from the great unifier eerie screaming harangues about “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” dangerous zealots, replete with red-and black Phantom of the Opera backdrops.

What followed the unifying rhetoric was often amnesties and exemptions for violent offenders during the 120 days of rioting, looting, killing, and attacks on police officers in summer 2020. In contrast, his administration lied when it alleged that numerous officers had died at the hands of the January 6 rioters. In addition, the Biden administration mandated long-term incarceration of many who committed no illegal act other than acting like buffoons and “illegally parading.”

The message was exemptions for torching a federal courthouse, a police precinct, or historic church or attempting to break into the White House grounds to get a president and his family—but long prison terms for wearing cow horns, a fur vest, and trespassing peacefully like a lost fool in the Capitol.

Finally, Biden’s most glaring failure was simply being unpresidential. He snaps at reporters, and shouts at importune times. He can no longer read off a big-print teleprompter. Even before a global audience, he cannot kick his lifelong creepy habit of turkey-gobbling on children necks, blowing into their ears and hair of young girls, and squeezing women far too long and far too hard.

His frailty redefined American presidential campaigning as basement seclusion and outsourcing propaganda to the media. And his disabilities only intensified during his presidency. Biden begins his day late and quits early. He has recalibrated the presidency as a 5-hour, 3-day a week job.

If Trump was the great exaggerator, Biden is our foremost liar. Little in his biography can be fully believed. He lies about everything from his train rides to the death of his son to his relationship with Biden-family foreign collaborators, to vaccinations to the economy. Anytime Biden mentions places visited, miles flown, or rails ridden, he is likely lying.

Biden continues with impunity because the media feels that a mentally challenged fabulist is preferable to Donald Trump and so contextualizes or ignores his falsehoods. Never has a U.S. president fallen and stumbled or gotten lost on stage so frequently—or been a single small trip away from incapacity.

So, yes, Biden’s initiatives have succeeded only in the sense of becoming successfully enacted—and therefore nearly destroying the country.

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marcusrobertobaq · 4 months ago

Text

DBH worldbuilding info u're supposed to know

The collection

US is having major issues with sea level rising quickly, making even the wealthy residents deciding not living right on the coast anymore. Polar ice has melted to an extent that rising sea levels have many states struggling to keep the water out of their coastal towns (Magazine)

CyberLife's intention with complex level humanization was to literally make people welcome 'em home like they're family instead of getting creeped about it (Magazine)

VR games are very common by 2038 (Magazine)

The President Cristina Warren is an ex-vlogger with no experience in government that relied on social media and celebrity status to be elected in 2036, originally a republican representative. There's a "rumor" CyberLife helped she getting elected by corrupt means and that's why they're "too close" (Magazine, Gallery, Cut concepts)

Warren got an approval of only 33% due to the sequence of bad decisions (Magazine)

The world's population is 10 billion by 2038 (Magazine)

Obesity is in a record high in Detroit by 2038 (Magazine)

NATO is divided about the Russia vs US conflict in the Arctic, they think everybody can benefit of the region without war but Warren is totally pushing for a conflict (Magazine)

Rare minerals used in synthetizing Thirium got Russia and US biting each other in the North Pole in recent yrs. Android manufacture dominates both the US and Russian economies (Magazine)

Kamski being the one creating Thirium 310 and biocomponents more than a decade ago suggests other areas with these minerals were already explored, the North Pole being the last one (Assumption)

Police is constantly using marketing data to identify criminals (Magazine)

Dating websites usually have less than 5% of women using it (Magazine)

0.4% of world population holds 94% of global wealth by 2038 (Magazine)

By 2038 there's constant propaganda selling Canada as the true land of freedom (Magazine)

No matter how u play as Markus u gonna eventually have event contexts distorted, including fake news. They're called criminal org and terrorists no matter what u do (Observation)

CyberLife developed a nano-android to help combating cancer and diseases that can extend the human life-span even reaching a semi-immortality status - and it's very promising as it was already succesful in doing its task (Magazine)

US life expectancy is 91 by 2038 (Magazine)

By 2038 US got a aging population but not enough young people to support the economy with the unemployment rate at 37.3%, and the "job" area is dominated by androids (Magazine, Observation)

When the rebellion starts the gov consider bringing retirees back to work as the country lack qualified manpower to deal with the withdraw of androids (Cut dialogue)

Only two countries have android industries that rival the United States: Russia and China, they're also in a space race of sorts (Magazine)

Team sports like baseball got at least 1 android per team (Magazine)

An advanced high speed train was completed in 2038, connecting New York and LA in less than 2,5 hrs and there's a high flux of east coast folks going to LA (Magazine)

Suburban prices there have rose 64% and California folks are worried they gonna get pushed out of the region (Magazine)

Detroit is currently in a Red Ice epidemic with it being the easiest route the poor go, either by selling or using it (Magazine)

There was a Red Ice Task Force from 2027 to 2031 that made major arrests and drug seizure during the first epidemic (Gallery, Articles)

Bees are extinct by 2038 and people expect a global famine. CyberLife is already making partnerships to create bee-robots while other groups try finding new alternatives (Magazine)

Environmentalists say the Earth’s environment is beyond repair (Magazine)

Global rainforests have been reduced by 79% since 2000 and coastal corals by 58% (Magazine)

During the events of the game an earthquake kills 10k people in China (Magazine)

CyberLife has partnership with the Department of Defense in the development and supply of military androids, something that started in the early 30s after it was approved to limit human casualties in the battlefield (Magazine, Observation)

In 2031 the US gov ordered 2 million androids for use in the infantry, mostly SQ800 units already being deployed in 2032 replacing human soldiers.

Michigan also announced the purchase of 5k auxiliary androids to assist law enforcement department but following the 2029 Android Act they can't use weapons (PlayStation Blog)

U.S. Army soldiers are equipped with advanced equipment to keep up with their android "subordinates" (Gallery)

Stock exchange falls 10% on fear of Arctic conflict by 2038 (Magazine)

68% of men prefer sex with an android to a human woman and with 52% of men saying they’ve tried the experience at least once (Magazine)

CyberLife currently got around 120 million androids across the globe and some people suspect they're using 'em to spy on people (Magazine)

There are at least 200k military android units already in service across the US military by 2038 and the gov is buying more for the Arctic conflict, an effort to double the infantry size (Magazine)

The US Army is 60~80% android, with humans mainly as commanders and strategists but they tend to use complex AIs to help with assistance (Magazine)

Sales of android intimate partners are very high as lotta men and women prefer living with an android than a human partner (Magazine)

Birthrate is at record low, population decline is said to be irreversible, marriage is in decline as traditional families become “thing of the past” and the divorce rate only increases (Magazine, News, Observation)

US is currently in an "antidepressant epidemic" due to the constant contact with technology, with people even lacking emotional development (Magazine)

The AX400 price is $899 by 2038 (Magazine)

5% of the music market is produced by human musicians. An android boyband Here4U is favorite to win Best Act, Best Video at global music awards - which are human record awards (Magazine, News)

Scientists found "alien" life on Titan: microorganisms living hundreds of kilometers below the surface, in an ocean of salt water protected by a thick layer of ice. The machine-i-forgot-the-name was sent in 2019 (Magazine)

Lute turtles, polar bears, mountain gorillas, african elephants and several species of tiger are extinct by 2038, with CyberLife now making some sorta android zoos (Magazine)

Canada is an android-free zone they don't sell or have any laws about it there as they don't permit androids inside 'em borders (Magazine)

CyberLife has recently released a tech demo of a quaterback android, something that got the Anti-Android Fan Group pissed (Magazine)

There's some sorta quantum magnet being studied that got the potential of cleaning carbon from the air (Magazine)

The Anti-Automation League and CrowneCars representants are in a discussion about ethical decision-making capability of autonomous cars (Magazine)

CyberLife has made a new quantum supercomputer, capable of one billion billion operations per second used to calculate the probability of mass extinction events (Magazine)

Hackers targeting systems like solar panels for ransom seems to be common thing (Magazine)

NASA announced the launch of a five android crew to explore Io (first time it's a full-machine crew). The journey will last three years (Magazine)

CyberLife is a trillionaire company by 2038, they were already billionaires a decade before (Magazine)

The first android ever officially released by CyberLife was the ST200 Chloe, costing 65k in 2024. By 2027 they already had 1mi androids sold (PlayStation Blog)

[continues on the next reblog]

#dbh #detroit become human #dbh observation list #i can add the in-game sources if needed

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simply-ivanka · 5 months ago

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Kamala Harris: Mystery Commander in Chief

How would the Vice President keep America safe in a dangerous world? The voters deserve some answers.

The Editorial Board --- Wall Street Journal

Kamala Harris is all but telling Americans they’ll have to elect her to find out what she really believes, as the Vice President ducks interviews and the media give her a free ride. This is bad enough on domestic issues, but on foreign policy it could be perilous. The world is more dangerous than it’s been in decades, and Americans deserve to know how the woman aiming to be Commander in Chief Harris would confront these threats.

Ms. Harris this week tweeted a photo of her sitting next to President Biden in the White House situation room discussing the Middle East. The point is to suggest she’s a co-pilot on Biden foreign policy.

This isn’t the credential the Harris campaign thinks it is, and the voters should hear directly from her what she thinks about the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, the failure to deter Russia in Ukraine, the Iranian nuclear program, China’s island grabs in the South China Sea, and more. The matter is all the more important because Ms. Harris conspicuously declined to choose a running mate who might lend foreign policy experience to the ticket.

Ms. Harris has given a few hints about her own views on the Middle East, and those aren’t encouraging. Her team spent much of Thursday walking back whether she told an anti-Israel group she’d be willing to ponder an arms embargo against Israel. She skipped Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress when our main Middle East ally is under siege. Did she pass over Josh Shapiro as her running mate because he would have enraged the anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party?

To the extent she has revealed a larger instinct on national security, it’s been wrong. She told the Council on Foreign Relations in 2019 that she’d rejoin the Iran nuclear deal as long as “Iran also returned to verifiable compliance.” But Iran didn’t comply and is now on the brink of a nuclear breakout.

Her 2018 Senate vote to “end U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen,” as Ms. Harris put it in a tweet, also hasn’t aged well. The Houthis the Saudis were fighting are now targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea almost daily and putting U.S. naval assets at risk. Does she think this status quo can persist—and what would she do differently?

Ms. Harris will surely argue that she and Mr. Biden reinvigorated the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after Vladimir Putin’s invasion in Ukraine. But absent a change in U.S. political will, the war in Ukraine isn’t on track to end on terms favorable to American interests. Her past enthusiasm for banning fracking—which her campaign is trying to walk back—also suggests she isn’t serious about checking Mr. Putin’s main source of war financing.

Ms. Harris would no doubt also tout the diplomatic progress the Biden Administration has made in Asia with Japan, the Philippines and others. Yet she whiffed on one of the single most important diplomatic questions in Asia: She opposed Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that would have excluded China and boosted America as the region’s premiere trading partner.

Most important, will Ms. Harris build up the hard military assets required to deter China’s Xi Jinping and a consolidating axis of U.S. adversaries? “I unequivocally agree with the goal of reducing the defense budget,” Ms. Harris said as a Senator in 2020 after voting against a Bernie Sanders proposal to slash the Pentagon by 10%. That vote needed no explanation, but Ms. Harris wanted to make sure the left knew she was sympathetic. Does she still want to slash the defense budget?

Donald Trump often shoots from the hip on these subjects, and his favorable comments about dictators are witless. But his first-term record, especially on Iran and the Middle East, is far stronger than the Biden-Harris performance.

Americans shouldn’t have to read tea leaves to figure out if Ms. Harris would keep the country safe in a treacherous world.

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mariacallous · 1 month ago

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s looming return to office is causing sleepless nights in Europe. Diplomats expect Trump 2.0 will cause more headaches because the world is less stable today than it was in 2017.

Chief among their fears is the growing partnership between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. “Trump is getting one global theater. And everything our adversaries are doing right now seems connected,” a Western security official said, on the condition of anonymity.

It’s unclear if Trump—not shy about his domestic agenda coming first—understands exactly what the prospect of an alliance between four nuclear powers whose leaders hate the United States means.

“These are four countries who are already working together against American interests,” said Brett Bruen, former White House global engagement director. “North Korea is helping Russia invade Ukraine. Iran’s proxies are attacking ships in the Red Sea. China is buying Iranian oil. It all fits and could get worse if Trump becomes more isolationist.”

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s decision to aid Russia by sending troops to Ukraine is the most surprising and ostentatious example of how the axis of autocracies might continue to grow.

The benefits to the Kremlin are obvious: Russia has suffered heavy losses since the start of the war, and North Korea is willing to help plug that gap by sending its own men to near-certain death.

What’s in it for Pyongyang is less clear. “There is significant risk of North Korean soldiers defecting as soon as they arrive in Ukraine—something the South Koreans are preparing for,” said John Everard, the former U.K. ambassador to North Korea. “Defections from his elite special forces would embarrass Kim. It would also be a major embarrassment if his troops turn out to be useless. It could damage his reputation as a man to be truly feared.”

However, Everard also said that Kim needs a backup plan. “North Korea has been almost solely reliant on China for a long time, and China has been signaling its displeasure at Kim’s new relationship with Russia,” Everard said. “Meanwhile, we don’t know what Kim is getting in return for sending troops to Russia. Perhaps he wants help developing new nuclear weapons and missile technology, or perhaps he has been forced to agree to send troops because, now that his stockpiles are exhausted, he can no longer meet Russian demands for munitions.”

NATO officials fear a global escalation of the European conflict. If North Korea continues to support Russia, does South Korea support Ukraine by sending missiles? Might Ukraine strike North Korean targets? And if it did, would North Korea demand China makes good on treaty commitments to protect North Korea? While alliance sources say that is “close to China’s worst nightmare,” it’s being seriously considered.

Anything that eases Russia’s burden in Ukraine gives Russian President Vladimir Putin room for his long-term objective: weakening the West and expanding Russian influence. Europe will continue as his primary target.

“The Kremlin and its proxies have attempted to influence multiple elections in Europe with the specific aim of installing pro-Russian politicians or governments across the continent,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House.

Whether it’s claims that the United States sees Europe as a colony via NATO or that Ukrainian neo-Nazis are offering human sacrifices to pagan gods, there are thousands of examples of Kremlin proxies seeking to coerce Europeans into hating Putin’s enemies. This type of activity often peaks during elections and has helped Kremlin stooges, such as Irakli Kobakhidze in Georgia, win elections or grow in strength across Europe.

Obviously, anti-West and anti-NATO sentiment is a danger in Europe itself, but it also has consequences for Americans. “The United States benefits when Europe’s economy thrives. It benefits from a strong Europe standing up for U.S. interests further afield, especially in Asia. There is no benefit to the United States if Europe becomes a Putin playground,” Giles said.

For Iran, the new axis of autocracies provides answers to some existential questions. Bluntly, Iran needs allies, and its relations with the other three are largely transactional.

“Iran plays different roles for each of these actors: To Russia, it’s a military partner and potential thorn in the side of the United States. To China, Iran is key to energy security and specifically the security of oil shipments from the Gulf,” said Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.media, a website that publishes analysis on the Middle East.

Iran, a country with multiple regional enemies—chiefly Israel—might seek increased military support later. This could be of concern to the United States if the region becomes less stable in the coming years. “The main threat that Iran could potentially pose for the United States is in the region, with American military bases and other facilities potentially at risk in the event of an all-out confrontation,” Ali Shabani said.

All the potential chaos the other three can cause would suit China well, especially if Trump whacks Beijing with steep tariffs once in office.

One European diplomat explained that a common fear among their peers is that Trump doesn’t fully grasp how many moving parts there are nor how they interact with each other. There is legitimate concern, for example, that Trump will cut a deal on Ukraine and pull back from NATO. Doing so would expose European security and leave the continent vulnerable to Russia. Trump also wants to impose tariffs on European exporters.

“You cannot withdraw support for Europe’s security, hit their economies, then expect their companies to stop selling semiconductors to China or consumers to not buy cheaper Chinese goods, which means what happens in Europe now could have consequences for Taiwan, which would have consequences for allies in the Indo-Pacific. It’s all connected,” the diplomat said.

Fears that Trump doesn’t take global affairs seriously are hardly new. But what might be different in his second term is how much, or how little, attention he pays to the rest of the world.

“The first time around, people were worried he would be looking for reasons to hit the red button,” Bruen said. “I think this time, it’s more concerning that he will turn a blind eye to the rest of the world and see the behavior of people like Putin and [Chinese President Xi Jinping] as not being America’s problem.”

Trump might want to focus on a purely domestic agenda, as is his right. But enemies are looking at a potential void right now and seeing an opportunity to reach a shared objective: to take a major bite out of Washington’s global influence and swallow it up themselves.

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mask131 · 2 months ago

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If you have not followed the news, the Taliban literaly robbed the voices of women in Afghanistan.

Already the numbers of suicides among women is in Afghanistan higher than it ever was before thanks to all the rights, freedoms and basic human decencies that were robbed from them. No more schools, no more hair salons, they can't do sport, they can't sing, they can't have a job, they have to hide their bodies and their faces, they couldn't go out in public without a man and now they basically cannot leave their houses at all anymore...

... And now it has been decreeted that women couldn't talk anymore. That the use of their voice was forbidden. Already two months ago they made the use of women's voices in public spaces a crime, and now they can't speak among each other anymore, in the name of a so-called "religion". What the Talibans do isn't religion, it's madness, and it isn't government, it's torture. Afghanistan is becoming a hell-hole, and it is no wonder the countries that are the most interested in building partnerships and striking alliances with it are lands like Russia or China...

Women of Afghanistan are literaly dehumanized, everybody is saying this. They can't do anything except have sex and deliver children. They become the slave of men, depending on their presence and forced to obey their every whims. They don't have faces, they don't have voices. It's sickening.

The Taliban should be stopped, but unfortunately nobody seems to care about doing anything over there anymore...

#rant of the day #afghanistan #taliban #women's right #abuse of women #religious fanaticism #religious extremism #feminism #feminicide #dictatorship #religious dictatorship

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hello-there · 9 days ago

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Communities are a new way to connect with the people on Tumblr who care about the things you care about! Browse Communities to find the perfect one for your interests or create a new one and invite your friends and mutuals!

#tumblr communities #communities

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warsofasoiaf · 26 days ago

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Re-evidence of defense contractors influencing U.S. Foreign Policy, the massive lobbying they do, the connections they have with various top level officials like Dick Cheney, blatant corruption with Raytheon and Qatar. And to clarify they are not starting wars for profit they are taking advantage of the underlying conditions to advance their financial interests. Obviously they are not puppet masters behind the scenes but to deny their influence is really perplexing.

So...lobbying and political connections that amount to...not much? Selling the things that they...already produce? They do...exactly what other industries and sectors do...and yet that somehow makes them this nebulous group of war profiteers? Even though, unlike many other industries, arms exports are strictly controlled requiring high-level government negotiations to set up export contracts under International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Even though unlike other industries, the defense industry typically operates under a monopsony purchasing environment? This to me, sounds like a clear case of double standards.

Heck, I have my problems with the defense industry and the contracting world, and I encourage transparency and anti-corruption efforts in the defense industry (and I wish we had more firms so we didn't have the Big Six - the Cold War ending gutted the defense industry which stifles creativity and innovation), but where are they "set(ting) defense policy, establish(ing) security partnerships, or do(ing) anything that would actually create the conditions for larger wars." That's what I was asking for - proof that a defense contractor contributed to creating a war so they could increase their market share. You've admitted that they're not "puppet masters," so I don't really see your point other than "they happen to manufacture arms and people buy them to later kill other people with."

If your objection is just a moral "I don't think they should make money selling defense equipment," sorry, but that's simply not realistic. Sure, it'd be nice to not ever have a need for defense equipment, but I think the past fifteen years have proven that the absence of robust defense industrial base actually incentivizes further conflict as aggressive actors take advantage of geopolitical weakness. The anemic nature of the European defense market directly contributed to the failure to deter Russia from their expansionist gains. China's industrial capacity has lent it highly aggressive territorial actions out of the belief that other Asian nations simply won't risk opposing them. State manufacturing has proven to not be as effective, either from a cost or a quality perspective. So the arms industry is here to stay.

If the objection is "industry uses lobbying to promote electoral candidates which end up advancing their interests," well, unfortunately that's simply a large bugbear in the US electoral system. Heck, the defense industry isn't even the greatest offender - healthcare is by far the largest lobbying sector in the United States. And as I mentioned before, the defense industrial sector typically operates under constraints that are quite restrictive compared to other sectors.

So if anything is "perplexing," it's this perpetual conspiracy theory that the defense industry, despite actually being quite modest compared to other sectors, is somehow this great big boogeyman. I mean, it's not particularly perplexing to *me* since if there's one thing I understand quite well, it's the contempt that outsiders have toward the profession of arms, but from an objective standpoint, yeah, it'd be pretty baffling.

-SLAL

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coochiequeens · 13 days ago

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If you're so desperate for a baby you are OK with them starting out in a warzone maybe you should ask yourself why are you willing to go to that extreme instead of adopting.

People need to realise the lengths we’ll go to’: Ukraine’s surrogacy industry booms amid war

A British couple has described how they met their twins in incubators before having to move to a safe room as an air raid siren sounded Amita Chakravorty and Sham Jagpal had twins via surrogate in Ukraine

By Gabriella Jozwiak December 14, 2024

Juggling feeds and nappy changes is a learning curve for all first-time parents of twins. But when London couple Amita Chakravorty and Sham Jagpal became mum and dad to Rey and Ryo in July this year, they also had to learn to survive missile and drone attacks, as the boys were born through surrogacy in Ukraine.

“It’s been a really crazy journey,” Amita told The i Paper from the couple’s London home while the four month olds napped. “People need to realise the lengths people like us will go to have a baby.”

The couple are among thousands globally choosing the war zone as a surrogacy destination. Despite the dangers and difficulties accessing the country, Ukrainian agencies say business is booming.

Couples come from countries including Pakistan, China, Australia, Spain and Italy. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine was the third-most popular for British couples after the US and UK, according to fertility law firm NGO Law.

Since then, more than 1,000 babies have been born through BioTexCom Surrogacy agency alone, according to its legal adviser Denis Herman.

On the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, about 200 surrogate mothers with this provider were pregnant. “Not even a month passed and we received calls to start or continue surrogacy processes,” he said.

Amita Chakravorty and Sham Jagpal missed the births of their twins after they arrived early and were confronted with life in a war zone

In addition to war, demand for surrogacy services has also withstood new laws coming into force in Italy. While surrogacy is already illegal in the country, in December a new law will ban couples from having a baby abroad. Herman believes this will not stop Italian couples coming to Ukraine, even though they could face up to two years and a €1m (£832,000) fine.

Alexander Schuster, a lawyer specialising in medical reproductive rights in Italy told The i Paper he would “strongly refrain anyone from going to Ukraine [from Italy] because it’s pretty sure they will have criminal proceedings started under the new law”. However, he believed couples could avoid the sanctions by entering plea bargains if this was their first crime.

For Amita, who suffers endometriosis and adenomyosis, surrogacy was a last resort.

After a decade trying to start a family involving 15 rounds of IVF in four different European countries and three miscarriages, the couple opted for surrogacy with the Ukrainian World Centre of Baby (WCOB) agency in 2023.

“We looked at the UK, Columbia, Mexico – we did our research,” says Sham. Ukraine only accepts married heterosexual couples, or those in a civil partnership, that are medically unable to carry a pregnancy to term. At least one intended parent must be genetically connected to the child – usually the father. If an egg donor is needed, this cannot be the Ukrainian surrogate.

Ukraine was preferable for the couple because Ukrainian law recognises the intended parents as legal guardians from conception. In the UK, the surrogate mother is the child’s legal parent at birth, meaning parental rights have to be transferred by parental order or adoption.

Amita and Sham had their biological materials (embryos, sperm and eggs) already frozen at a clinic in Czechia. WCOB transported these to Ukraine, meaning the couple only had to make one trip to collect their babies.

“We were clearly apprehensive because the country was at war,” said Sham. “But the clinic said everything is functioning normally in Kyiv. It was perfectly open for us to continue with the process.”

The babies are now four months old and back in the UK

Costs in Ukraine are also markedly lower than other countries. Helen Shumskyh, head of sales at Vireo Agency in Ukraine, said that the cost of surrogacy in Ukraine was between £33,000 and £54,000 for a package, including transport to the country, accommodation, surrogate expenses and agency fees.

In the US costs range from £103,000 to £276,000. In the UK surrogacy is legal, but surrogates cannot be paid, and surrogacy agreements are not enforceable by law.

“The price in Ukraine now is almost the same as it was before the war started,” Shumskyh said. “Usually in surrogacy there is a yearly evaluation of the prices, but no one has increased rates here because we all understand that in our current situation we need to attract customers. After the war finishes, we expect prices to change.”

The agency currently has 15 couples at various stages of their surrogacy journey. Shumskyh says demand increases every month. The company has sought to reassure prospective parents by relocating surrogate mothers to Western cities of Lviv and Ushgorod once they reach 28 weeks of pregnancy. These are far away from the front line and experience fewer attacks. Although surrogates can live in higher-risk eastern regions until then.

Ukrainian surrogate mothers are aged up to 35 and must have already given birth naturally to a healthy child. They receive between £11,700 and £14,200 per pregnancy. Nova Espero agency deputy director Sergey Glushenko said surrogate mothers were “normal, wealthy women” who wanted to help others, as well as make money.

“In 90 per cent of cases the surrogate wants to improve their living conditions, such as buy a new apartment,” Glushenko said. Despite worsening economic conditions in Ukraine, he said the number of women applying to become surrogates had not increased.

Amita and Sham never met their surrogate mother. They missed the birth as the twins arrived unexpectedly almost six weeks prematurely. Because flights to Ukraine are banned, the couple travelled to Poland then by car to Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

“We were stepping into the unknown,” says Amita. “We passed so many graveyards on the way. It became real that so many people have died.”

Finally the couple met their twins, who were both in incubators. “There are no words to describe the feelings when you see your babies,” Amita recalls. But quickly they were brought back to reality when an air raid sounded and hospital staff moved the babies to a safe room. It was the first of numerous such experiences.

The couple spent many sleepless nights sheltering in their AirBnB bathroom when sirens sounded. On more than one occasion they saw explosions in the sky as air defences shot down enemy drones above them.

On 26 August they took cover in an underground station as Russia attacked Ukraine with 200 missiles and drones, knocking out the power supply. “When we came out, everywhere you could smell chemicals or gunpowder,” said Amita. “At the flat we had no electricity and couldn’t sterilise bottles for the babies’ feeds.”

The couple expected to spend six weeks in Kyiv waiting for passports to be issued. In the end, legal delays left the family stranded for more than two months. Despite this, the couple said they “wouldn’t change a thing”. But recommend others consider Ukraine carefully, as the paperwork took them longer than anticipated.

Since bringing their boys home, Amita and Sham have kept in close contact with friends they made in Ukraine. “They were generous, kind,” said Sham. “It was a kind of warmth you don’t see in the world anymore.”

Amita has not deactivated the air raid alerts on her phone. She believes people in the UK are unaware of the danger the war poses. “This is real,” she said. “Don’t think that war is not going to come here.”

Yes I have empathy for a woman who wpuld go through 15 rounds of IVF in four different European countries and three miscarriages, but at some point the someone in the industry should have stopped taking money and suggested adoption.

And was it a coincidence that they had boys or was the frozen material they sent to Ukraine sex screened beforehand?

#Ukraine #International surrogacy is Human Trafficking #Babies are not commodities #Babies starting their lives in a war zone #BioTexCom Surrogacy agency #Ukrainian World Centre of Baby (WCOB) agency #The fertility industry exploits hopeful parents by taking their money for repeated rounds of IVF #Vireo Agency #surrogates can live in higher-risk eastern regions before they reach 28 weeks #Nova Espero agency #Sergey Glushenko said surrogate mothers were normal wealthy women who wanted to help others as well as make money #Surrogacy exploits poor women

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