Thread

September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy

522 points · 391 comments · marjancek

flossly · 1790757977 · focus · HN ↗
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1. Germanioum · 1790758782 · focus · HN ↗
  No the west did not want a confrontation with Russia/Putin. Merkel tried to reign in Putin with Gas.
  Putin wanted the confrontation and started to attack Ukraine, killing people for no other reason than his ego.
  US has expensive fuel and not the right one and also still trades its oil internationally and facing a huge price increase for millions, it also has to pay a lot more money for fertilizers.
  The oil of venezuela is the wrong kind of oil and can't just be bought and processed by the USA with a snip of a finger. They have to build/change their refineries for it.
  Minsconstrued in the media? Russia will not attack Europe because Putin knows he is gone the moment he starts attacking Nato.
  Yeah lets have a PROPER discussion and not some right-wing telegram magic group thinking wanna be intelligence experts. After Ukraine, Moldovoa, Belarus and others would have fallen.
  This proxy war is a realltive good outcome especially after what russia was doing the last 15 years: Propaganda manipulation in the west and killing of people with toxins and intervening / playing armsdealer to Africa with conflicts against France.
  1. etcetcetcetceta · 1790760537 · focus · HN ↗
    >Merkel tried to reign in Putin with Gas.
    It's rein.
    It's also nonsense, Russia had Germany on a leash, you cannot seriously believe Merkel was playing Putin.
    SideburnsOfDoom · 1790783856 · focus · HN ↗
    > Merkel tried to reign in Putin with Gas.
    The key word there is tried. "wandel durch handel" means "Change through trade" (1). That's what Germany tried, it was a part of their foreign policy.
    Now we all know that it did not work with Putin's Russia, but that was not the claim made by Germanioum. It is not nonsense that they tried. Even if they tried and failed.
    Sentences often make more sense when you read all of the words in them.
    1) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandel_durch_Handel" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandel_durch_Handel
    etcetcetcetceta · 1790871848 · focus · HN ↗
    If that was their plan it was incredibly naive, or maybe this is just propaganda to convince suckers that they were trying to do something.
    Generally speaking if you want to have some negotiating power you don't make yourself completely dependent on the counterparty.
    I never thought of Germany as a nation of morons but maybe it's time to revisit that.
    SideburnsOfDoom · 1790924796 · focus · HN ↗
    > If that was their plan
    If you are still in doubt about this, I urge you to read the article linked above. Or google the term. I assumed that it was something that "everybody knows" but apparently not.

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