Not really. Suppose he invaded China. Do you think he’d get away with that?

Russia’s economy is roughly comparable in size to the Netherlands. Putin has destroyed so much of it. He’s caused enormous brain drain by driving young men with any means and intelligence out of the country. He’s devastated his own industrial base and now he’s on the brink of losing to Ukraine, a country far smaller than Russia.

He’s very, very, very far from owning the planet.

No one is untouchable. No one is invincible. No one has unlimited resources.

One day Putin will seem untouchable. The next day he gets pulled out of a ditch like Gaddafi.

Thanks for this.

Greed is a dangerous word on Lemmy. It’s usually associated with billionaires, not people from Latin America trying to make a better life for themselves.

The problem is you’ve created a false binary between refugee and economic migrant. In reality there’s a huge spectrum of economic and political conditions which drive people to leave their home country and seek opportunities elsewhere, none of which has anything to do with greed. In so doing you’ve painted vast swathes of people as greedy, the same thing the Trump admin has been doing to justify using ICE to break up families.

Real refugees are a very narrow class of migrants. They’re narrowly defined by the UN because their acceptance is controversial in international politics. Almost all migrants are economic but almost none of those I would classify as greedy (people travelling from wealthy liberal countries to the US to pay lower taxes and make more money). Many economic migrants are people travelling from poor countries with corrupt/oppressive governments to seek a better life in the US, Canada, or Western Europe. These folks end up working as cleaning staff for businesses, delivery/Uber drivers, or working on farms picking produce. Hard jobs that no one would accept out of greedy motivations alone.

The remaining are international students (or recent graduates), usually from Asia, who are classified as economic migrants but I would consider political/social migrants. I know A LOT of these folks. I wouldn’t call any of them greedy. They’re here for a better opportunity, yes, but also to get away from their parents and the social/political problems back home.

That’s flat out wrong. You may be an immigrant but you have a warped picture of the landscape. Countless economic migrants are borderline refugees. They’re fleeing corrupt, crime-ridden, and low opportunity countries in the hopes of a better life. They aren’t qualified refugees because they aren’t fleeing imminent threats of violence but they’re definitely not doing so out of greed. They’re taking enormous personal risks with the dream of a better life. Many end up being economically exploited in their destination countries, hated, abused, and even arrested by ICE (in the case of many South and Central Americans moving to the US).

You’re also wrong about refugees being left wing. The most conservative people I’ve ever met belong to refugee communities from Somalia. They have extremely tight knit families and they support every new family who arrives from Somalia. They are extremely warm and loving people but they are devoutly conservative Muslims in their beliefs and practices.

Nothing Russia has done including (or since) the invasion in 2022 was smart. It was all stupid.

Russia’s wasted a million soldiers on grabbing a rather small amount of Ukrainian land. They’ve destroyed their own economy, their trade relationships with most of the world, and their demographic future. Take a million men off the streets of most countries and it’s going to crash your population within a generation or two.

Yeah. Sometimes I think people are so used to media (TV, movies, video games) and the distancing effect of being in a vehicle (looking out a window at people) that they’re actually capable of travelling to another country without actually believing that they are there in person.

Apart from stories like this, there are countless other stories of clueless travellers who walk around treating locals like NPCs, not really realizing how annoying and offensive they are. These big blowback stories are just the tip of the iceberg on that whole genre of stupidity.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Thailand’s lèse majesté laws are very strict. The government treats insults to the monarchy as a harm to the entire country.

Just don’t do it! If you’re not a Thai person then what business do you have with the monarchy anyway?