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Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.

Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.

On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Telegram Channels

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.

https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.

https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.

https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.

https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.

https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.

https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.

https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.

https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.

https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.

https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine

With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:

https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Yesterday's discussion post.


  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
    hexbear
    34
    2 years ago

    People here weren't kidding that most Americans don't care about the war. I just came back from the US and nearly everybody I talked to didn't have the war on their mind at all. They were mostly angry at Biden and Washington for rising prices and inaction on stuff like gun reform. The few that did talk about Putin were people who made good money and had time to spend playing armchair general. An even bigger number were boomers.

    • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
      hexbear
      25
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I try to give my normie friends short periodic updates on the war when we hang out (like 5 minute summaries every 2 weeks) but they have just totally lost interest. They used to ask me what was going on and watch Medhurst or something with me, now they just don’t care anymore

      I’m used to it though, this is how it was for the entire duration of the Syrian Civil War. No westerners cared about it at all, except to shit on Assad and call him a fascist barrel bombing dictator

        • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
          hexbear
          20
          2 years ago

          True… if they aren’t going to be anti-imperialist or invest in learning about the conflict then their best option is to just stay out of it completely. Better they are indifferent than repeating NATO lines and beating the drums of war.

    • 20000bannedposters [love/loves]
      hexbear
      22
      2 years ago

      Prices have risen cuz of the war. That's they only reason they have risen. Yet Americans are like

      Why is everything so expensive now!

      • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
        hexbear
        26
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        You could tell the political side based on who they blamed. Libs blamed Republicans and Chuds blamed Biden. What I found most interesting was how little the average American even knew of politics. Not a single mention of Manchin or Sinema outside of people who followed politics in their spare time.

          • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
            hexbear
            16
            2 years ago

            Then again, we're kind of guilty of the same thing. More people where I live stay on top of politics effecting our department but the knowledge of what goes on at the central level drops significantly unless the President is going through yet another scandal.

            • star_wraith [he/him]
              hexbear
              12
              2 years ago

              The internet greatly distorts our perceptions of how many people actually care about all this.

              • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
                hexagon
                M
                hexbear
                11
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                Which makes the whole "We mustn't let the world forget about Ukraine! Putin's strategy is to make people stop caring about it or actively angry about it until the sanctions are lifted!" thing by journalists so funny. Like, dude, 90%+ of people forgot about Ukraine about two weeks after it started. They either outright don't give a single shit either way because they're too busy with their own lives, or they're vaguely pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia but they aren't like, informed about current events there aside from the odd glimpse at a headline in the news as they proceed to scroll down to look at an article about the latest culture war fad.

                We, along with the redditors and bluechecks (and even they don't really care anymore, though they're more pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia than your average dude on the street) are the only people who care enough to have some idea of what Russia and Ukraine are currently doing. We're the weirdos. I would wager that the number of people in the world outside of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Russia who could tell you anything at all about the war right now (even if it's just "Russia is attacking Severodonetsk" or even "Russia is fighting in the Donbass" is easily less than 1%.

                • D61 [any]
                  hexbear
                  4
                  2 years ago

                  I keep catching myself, as an USAmerican, thinking that the war in Ukraine only started 2 weeks ago. Its weird and I don't like it.

      • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
        hexbear
        15
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        The war is not the only reason.

        There is a supply chain crisis that predates the war by several years, and 2 years of an ultra-loose monetary policy. The money supply was literally increased by 45% in 2020 alone in massive trillion dollar printing sprees, this money was given as business loans and stock market injections.

        China also has recently had massive lockdowns in major economic and shipping centers that cause downstream effects.

        We were already seeing stagflation before the current crisis in Ukraine even started, and most of the global economic effects since then are caused by artificially imposed sanctions and not by actual shortages or issues. The only direct economic impacts of Ukraine war itself is grain and sunflower oil. Ukraine isn’t a big enough player in anything else to be relevant.

            • 20000bannedposters [love/loves]
              hexbear
              3
              2 years ago

              The war led to the sanctions so it's the same thing.

              With out the war there would be no sanctions and commodities wouldn't be sky rocketing

              • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                hexbear
                5
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                No it’s not because the unilateral sanctions are both illegal and completely optional. Europe did not need to self destruct and destroy its own economy in service of American hegemony, they opted into it. Notice how China doesn’t blow up the world economy in a fit whenever America invaded Iraq or Saudis invade Yemen.

                Putin did not force the wests hand. They did not need to do illegal and unprecedented sanctions and an embargo on themselves. It’s purely idealist delusion in service to American empire.

    • kristina [she/her]
      hexbear
      21
      2 years ago

      most Americans don’t care about the war

      :grillman:

  • NotALeatherMuppet [none/use name]
    hexbear
    33
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    no mega so i'll post here.

    shout out to the allied forces who died terrifying deaths on this day in 1944 to attempt to rid europe of fascism. for one day, you fought and died like the red army and you've spent the following 80 years bragging about it.

    • Tiocfaidhcaisarla [he/him, comrade/them]
      hexbear
      24
      2 years ago

      I know Stalin had been asking, if not begging for a western front to be opened up, and it obviously relieved pressure when it was done, but at the same time by that point the Red Army was really rolling. Gotta wonder if the western allies had hoped for more Soviet deaths and waited, if the Red Army would have made it even further west by wars end, maybe making it easier to supply the western communist resistance movements, like a commie Gladio. I dream..

      But yes, Normandy was a battle of incredible bravery and all who fought fascism deserve some glory. Just wish the West acknowledged who took out 80% of the Nazis

      • NotALeatherMuppet [none/use name]
        hexbear
        17
        2 years ago

        america and britain like "yeah, we hear you stalin. we know you're fighting a war of extermination. we've fought those too. on the winning side. you'll be aight, just give us idk 6 more months"

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        hexbear
        12
        2 years ago

        I've heard it said that a major impetus for D-day was the fear that the Soviets were going to win the war on their own, and the western Allies were terrified that if they didn't make it to Berlin first then all of Europe would get painted Red, permanently.

      • Alaskaball [comrade/them]M
        hexbear
        11
        2 years ago

        From Molotov Remembers ,

        We asked for troops from out allies, proposed they send forces to our western front. But they didn't. they told us to shift our troops from the Caucases and they would provide protection for our oil fields. They also wanted to stand guard over Murmansk. And Roosevelt [ Wanted to establish air bases against Japan in the Soviet] Far East. He wanted to occupy certain parts of the Soviet Union instead of fighting. Afterward it wouldn't haven't been easy to get them out of there....

        12-06-69

        I knew them all, the capitalists, but Churchill was the strongest, the smartest among them. Of course he was 100 percent imperialist. But he admired Stalin.... Clever. He said "Let us establish our airfield at Murmansk, for you're in a difficult situation." "Yes," we said, "it's a hard time for us, so send these forces to the front. We'll guard Murmansk ourselves." He backed down after that.

        04-10-72

        We didn't let the Germans destroy our allies when Hitler was smashing them in the Ardennes. It was not to our advantage. In 1942 I took part in all the negotiations for a second front in Europe. From the first I didn't believe they would do it. I remained calm and realized this was a completely impossible operation for them. but our demand was politically necessary, and we had to press them for everything. I don't doubt that Stalin too believed they would not carry it out. But we had to demand it! For the sake of our people. They were waiting for some kind of Allied military aid. For us that piece of paper had vast political significance. It raised our spirits, and in those days this meant a lot.

        Churchill flew to Moscow and insisted they couldn't open a second front in Europe in 1942. I saw that Stalin accepted this calmly. He understood it was impossible. But he needed that paper agreement. It was of great importance for the people, for politics, and for the future pressure on the Allies.

        "To pressure them?" (Interviewer Felix Chuev asks Molotov)

        of course. Well, if you can't help us with a second front, help us with arms, help us with aircraft. If they had opened the second front in 1942 or 1943 instead of 1944 it would have gone very hard for them, but it would have helped us immensely!

        "Could they have done it in 1943"

        Yes but they didn't! They started in Italy. Even this was helpful to us. In the end, we fought not for England but for socialism. That's the point. To expect help from them in defense of socialism? The Bolsheviks would have been idiots! But in order to pressure them, we said: What knaves! You say one thing but do another. This also put them in an embarrassing position in the eyes of their own people. For the people sensed that the Russians were fighting and they were not. Not only were the Allies not fighting, but they were writing and saying one thing while doing another, This unmasked them in the eyes of their people. Why are you cheating? This undermined faith in the imperialists. All of this was important to us.

        I believed that my journey in 1942 [to London and Washington] and its results were a great victory for us. We knew they couldn't dare mount a second front, but we made them agree to it in writing. Stalin also instructed me to demand they draw off thirty to forty enemy divisions from the Russian front. When I met with Roosevelt I had to hide my astonishment when I told him that and he replied, "A legitimate, reasonable demand." He was probably thinking only of dollars and thought, "You'll have to come begging, anyway. Of course we have to help you, but it's our best interests that you fight a bit longer. And that's why we're ready to support you." He agreed without changes to the communique I drafted, saying that a second front would be opened in 1942. That disgraced him in the eyes of his own people. Most people are honest, and when the government promised on the people's behalf to open the second front, and then didn't,the people realized they couldn't trust such leaders. And such disappointment with the imperialists was to our benefit. All this had to be taken in consideration. I had no doubts on this score, and Stalin trusted them even less. Of course. But we reproved them! And rightly so.

        Roosevelt believed in dollars. Not that he believed in nothing else, but he concidered America to be so rich, and we so poor and worn out, that we would surely come begging. "Then we'll kick their ass, but for now we have to help them keep going."

        That's where they miscalculated. They weren't Marxists, and we were. They woke up only when half of Europe had passed from them. Then Churchill, of course, found himself in a quandary. To my mind, Churchill, as an imperialist, was the cleverest among them. He sensed that if we smashed the Germans, little by little feathers would fly in England. That's the way he felt. Nut Roosevelt thought, they will come groveling to us. A poor country with no industry, no bread -- they will come begging. They have nowhere else to go.

        But we viewed the situation quite differently. All our people were prepared for sacrifice and struggle. We didn't believe in a second front, of course, but we had to try for it. We took them in: You can't? But you promised.... That was the way.

        06-09-76

        Churchill said as early as 1918 that Soviet power should be strangled in its infancy. But at our intimate dinners with Roosevelt in Tehran and Yalta, he said, "I get up in the morning and pray that Stalin is alive and well. Only Stalin can save the peace!" He was confident that Stalin would play that exceptional role which he had assumed in the war. His [Churchill's] cheeks were wet with tears. Either he was a great actor or he spoke sincerely. Not without reason did England lose a little more than 200,000 people while we had more than twenty million victims. That's why they needed us. That man hated us and tried to use is. But we used him, too. We made him work with us. Otherwise it would have been very hard for us.

        06-16-77

    • D61 [any]
      hexbear
      11
      2 years ago

      :hillary: I was a Goldwater girl!

    • @W_Hexa_W
      hexbear
      5
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      deleted by creator

  • NonWonderDog [he/him]
    hexbear
    27
    2 years ago

    lol at Zumwalt. Reposting my summary from a few weeks ago:

    Zumwalt is still the funniest. It was supposed to be this crazy futuristic stealth ship with railguns driven from an insanely high-power gas turbine system. The railguns didn’t work. The laser weapons didn’t work. The power pack that was supposed to power everything didn’t work. The anti-radar coating didn’t work. They put smart guns with guided projectiles on the ship instead of the railguns. They didn’t work, and so they never made any ammo. So the Navy still operates two stealth gun destroyers with no gun and no stealth.

  • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
    hexbear
    26
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Sounds like the much hailed Severodonetsk offensive was yet another PR offensive and there has been no Ukrainian victory.

    • makotech222 [he/him]
      hexbear
      18
      2 years ago

      Its pretty obvious at this point that Ukraine has no defensive plan, or defensive assets left. Everything is just PR at this point.

      • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
        hexbear
        22
        2 years ago

        There are reports they are sending 7 brigades of Territorial Defense Units (up to 20,000 men) to bolster the defenses in the Donbas. These are older reservists who are untrained and armed with only small arms, civilian vehicles and maybe mortars. They are getting poured into the areas around the entrenched defenses apparently, which means they are on the frontline out in the open.

        They are sending these men to get slaughtered by APCs, drones, artillery, missiles and air strikes. They have no chance whatsoever and their entire purpose is to die to buy a couple weeks.

        Buy time for what? I think the oligarchs are making insane amounts of profits right now re-selling NATO weapons and pilfering NATO funds. They will drag this on forever

        • chlooooooooooooo [she/her]
          hexbear
          16
          2 years ago

          (up to 20,000 men)

          is that the same 20,000 men who participated in the kherson counter-offensive? lmao

          • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
            hexbear
            17
            2 years ago

            Yes but this time I believe them because these are territorial defense militia units not mobile mechanized infantry corps like Ukraine claimed they had for Kherson. I absolutely believe Kiev is sending tens of thousands of old men to the front to die

        • SoyViking [he/him]
          hexbear
          14
          2 years ago

          It's so insanely evil what the US and their henchmen in Kiev are doing. Thousands of Ukrainians will get murdered for absolutely nothing because of this.

  • CoolerOpposide [none/use name]
    hexbear
    24
    2 years ago

    Hey so uh… did we stop doing covid booster shots or whatever because I’d like my next one instead of having permanent brain damage if I get covid? Does anybody know?

    • half_giraffe [comrade/them]
      hexbear
      10
      2 years ago

      I just checked for my city and pharmacies are still doing free appointments for boosters for anyone over the age of 12, with the community sites (previously open to everyone) focused on initial doses for kids 5-12 years old. So at least for [BIG AMERICAN CITY] we're still doing boosters

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
    hexagon
    M
    hexbear
    20
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Is US/NATO (with WEF Help) Pushing for a Global South Famine? Michael Hudson

    Part 1 - the US and NATO

    Is the proxy war in Ukraine turning out to be only a lead-up to something larger, involving world famine and a foreign-exchange crisis for food- and oil-deficit countries?

    Many more people are likely to die of famine and economic disruption than on the Ukrainian battlefield. It thus is appropriate to ask whether what appeared to be the Ukraine proxy war is part of a larger strategy to lock in U.S. control over international trade and payments. We are seeing a financially weaponized power grab by the U.S. Dollar Area over the Global South as well as over Western Europe. Without dollar credit from the United States and its IMF subsidiary, how can countries stay afloat? How hard will the U.S. act to block them from de-dollarizing, opting out of the U.S. economic orbit?

    U.S. Cold War strategy is not alone in thinking how to benefit from provoking a famine, oil and balance-of-payments crisis. Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum worries that the world is overpopulated – at least with the “wrong kind” of people. As Microsoft philanthropist (the customary euphemism for rentier monopolist) Bill Gates has explained: “Population growth in Africa is a challenge.” His lobbying foundation’s 2018 “Goalkeepers” report warned: “According to U.N. data, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. Its population is projected to double by 2050,” with “more than 40 percent of world’s extremely poor people … in just two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.”

    Gates advocates cutting this projected population increase by 30 percent by improving access to birth control and expanding education to “enable more girls and women to stay in school longer, have children later.” But how can that be afforded with this summer’s looming food and oil squeeze on government budgets?

    South Americans and some Asian countries are subject to the same jump in import prices resulting from NATO’s demands to isolate Russia. JPMorgan Chase head Jamie Dimon recently warned attendees at a Wall Street investor conference that the sanctions will cause a global “economic hurricane.” He echoed the warning by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in April that, “To put it simply: we are facing a crisis on top of a crisis.” Pointing out that the Covid pandemic has been capped by inflation as the war in Ukraine has made matters “much worse, and threatens to further increase inequality” she concluded that: “The economic consequences from the war spread fast and far, to neighbors and beyond, hitting hardest the world’s most vulnerable people. Hundreds of millions of families were already struggling with lower incomes and higher energy and food prices.”

    The Biden administration blames Russia for “unprovoked aggression.” But it is his administration’s pressure on NATO and other Dollar Area satellites that has blocked Russian exports of grain, oil and gas. But many oil- and food-deficit countries see themselves as the primary victims of “collateral damage” caused by US/NATO pressure. Is world famine and balance-of-payments crisis a deliberate US/NATO policy?

    On June 3, African Union Chairperson Macky Sall, President of Senegal, went to Moscow to plan how to avoid a disruption in Africa’s food and oil trade by refusing to become pawns in the US/NATO sanctions. So far in 2022, President Putin noted: “Our trade is growing. In the first months of this year it grew by 34 percent.” But Senegal’s President Sall worried that: “Anti-Russia sanctions have made this situation worse and now we do not have access to grain from Russia, primarily to wheat. And, most importantly, we do not have access to fertilizer.”

    U.S. diplomats are forcing countries to choose whether, in George W. Bush’s words, “you are either for us or against us.” The litmus test is whether they are willing to force their populations to starve and shut down their economies for lack of food and oil by stopping trade with the world’s Eurasian core of China, Russia, India, Iran and their neighbors.

    Mainstream Western media describe the logic behind these sanctions as promoting a regime change in Russia. The hope was that blocking it from selling its oil and gas, food or other exports would drive down the ruble’s exchange rate and “make Russia scream” (as the U.S. tried to do to Allende’s Chile to set the stage for its backing of the Pinochet military coup). Exclusion from the SWIFT bank-clearing system was supposed to disrupt Russia’s payment system and sales, while seizing Russia’s $300 billion of foreign-currency reserves held in the West was expected to collapse the ruble, preventing Russian consumers from buying the Western goods to which they had become accustomed. The idea (and it seems so silly in retrospect) was that Russia’s population would rise in rebellion to protest against how much more Western luxury imports cost. But the ruble soared rather than sunk, and Russia quickly replaced SWIFT with its own system linked to that of China. And Russia’s population began to turn away from the West’s aggressive enmity.

    Evidently some major dimensions are missing from the U.S. national-security think-tank models. But when it comes to global famine, was a more covert and even larger strategy at work? It is now looking like the major aim of the U.S. war in Ukraine all along was merely to serve as a catalyst, an excuse to impose sanctions that would disrupt the world’s food and energy trade. Additionally to manage this crisis in a way that would afford U.S. diplomats an opportunity to confront Global South countries with the choice “Your loyalty and neoliberal dependency or your life?” In the process, this would “thin out” the world’s non-white populations that so worried Mr. Dimon and the WEF.

    There must have been the following calculation: Russia accounts for 40% of the world’s grain trade and 25 percent of the world fertilizer market (45 percent if Belarus is included). Any scenario would have included a calculation that if so large a volume of grain and fertilizer was withdrawn from the market, prices would soar, just as they have done for oil and gas.

    Adding to the disruption in the balance-of-payments of countries having to import these commodities, the price is rising for buying dollars to pay their foreign bondholders and banks for debts falling due. The Federal Reserve’s tightening of interest rates has caused a rising premium for U.S. dollars over euros, sterling and Global South currencies.

    It is inconceivable that the consequences of this on countries outside of Europe and the United States were not taken into account, because the global economy is an interconnected system. Most disruptions are in the 2 to 5 percent range, but today’s US/NATO sanctions are so far off the historical track that price increases will soar substantially above the historic range. Nothing like this has happened in recent times.

    This suggests that what appeared in February to be a war between Ukrainians and Russia is really a trigger intended to restructure the world economy – and to do so in a way to lock U.S. control over the Global South. Geopolitically, the proxy war in Ukraine has been a handy excuse for America’s to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

    The choice confronting Global South countries: to starve by paying their foreign bondholders and bankers, or to announce, as a basic principle of international law: “As sovereign countries, we put our survival above the aim of enriching foreign creditors who have made loans that have gone bad as a result of their choice to wage a new Cold War. As for the destructive neoliberal advice that the IMF and World Bank have given us, their austerity plans were destructive instead of helpful. Therefore, their loans have gone bad. As such, they have become odious.”

    NATO policy has given Global South countries no choice but to reject its attempt to establish a U.S. food stranglehold on the Global South by blocking any competition from Russia, thereby monopolizing the world’s grain and energy trade. The major grain exporter was the heavily subsidized U.S. farm sector, followed by Europe’s highly subsidized Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These were the main grain exporters before Russia entered the picture. The US/NATO demand is to roll back the clock to restore dependency on the Dollar Area and its eurozone satellites.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
      hexagon
      M
      hexbear
      14
      2 years ago
      Part 2 - Russia and China

      The implicit Russian and Chinese counterplan

      What is needed for the world’s non-US/NATO population to survive is a new world trade and financial system. The alternative is world famine for much of the world. More people will die of the sanctions than have died on the Ukrainian battlefield. Financial and trade sanctions are as destructive as military attack. So the Global South is morally justified in putting its sovereign interests above those of the wielders of international financial and trade weaponry.

      First, reject the sanctions and reorient trade to Russia, China, India, Iran and their fellow members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The problem is how to pay for imports from these countries, especially if U.S. diplomats extend sanctions against such commerce.

      There is no way that Global South countries can pay for oil, fertilizer and food from these countries and also pay the dollar debts that are the legacy of U.S.-sponsored neoliberal trade policy subject to U.S. and eurozone protectionism.

      Therefore, the second need is to declare a debt moratorium – in effect, a repudiation – of the debts that represent loans gone bad. This act would be analogous to the 1931 suspension of German reparations and Inter-Ally debts owed to the United States. Quite simply, today’s Global South debts cannot be paid without subjecting debtor countries to famine and austerity.

      A third corollary that follows from these economic imperatives is to replace the World Bank and its pro-U.S. policies of trade dependency and underdevelopment with a genuine Bank for Economic Acceleration. Along with this institution is a fourth corollary in the form of the new bank’s sibling: a replacement for the IMF free of austerity junk economics and subsidy of America’s client oligarchies coupled with currency raids on countries resisting U.S. privatization and financialization takeovers.

      The fifth requirement is for countries to protect themselves by joining a military alliance as an alternative to NATO, to avoid being turned into another Afghanistan, another Libya, another Iraq or Syria or Ukraine.

      The main deterrent to this strategy is not U.S. power, for it has shown itself to be a paper tiger. The problem is one of economic consciousness and will.

      • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
        hexbear
        12
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        They definitely are using this to their advantage. I'm less sure if that was the intention given how short-sighted American lawmakers are, but they certainly have been trying to take advantage of the opportunity once it started to show itself. The issue is that the response overall is mixed and won't result in the complete submissiveness of the global south. Some countries have ignored the threats and gone ahead with trade deals while others find themselves leaning more towards the IMF or World Bank. The bigger countries have even seen some subdivisions opting for Chinese/Russian assistance even if their central government didn't.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
      hexagon
      M
      hexbear
      8
      2 years ago

      I'm imagining Mao being the initial pioneer of discovering and sorting liberalism like Mendeleev and the Periodic Table, and then you and others doing experiments in a lab until you, with hair bedraggled and bags under your eyes, gaze at the results on your screen and go "...holy shit, I've done it."

  • TacoGyrosKebabShwama [he/him]
    hexbear
    18
    2 years ago

    "It’s fairly obvious to everybody here that the Democratic Party is, with the most generous interpretation, an entirely feckless organization to stop the right-wing, and in a more realistic interpretation is actively collaborating with the Republicans to prevent any kind of left-wing opposition and thus will plunge us ever-deeper into fascism - I only really put this article in the update at all to show that Jennifer Rubin and all her Resistance ilk are still clinging to this fantasy that if only the filibuster was removed, if only, if only, if only, then the United States would be fixed, even in this moment of rapidly deteriorating conditions for the vast majority of people in this country, especially among minorities. The last media article published before the power lines crumble from neglect and the heavy metal runoff from a forced sterilization camp poisons the last river in America will be titled “President Rittenhouse, Have You No Shame, Sir?"

    @SeventyTwoTrillion you do good news comentary bits

  • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
    hexbear
    18
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Noone judge me, but ever since the news stories about his liberation and recapture I've been wondering how the Mariupol lion is doing.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
      hexagon
      M
      hexbear
      21
      2 years ago

      'Nothing left': Mariupol picks up pieces after ferocious fighting France24

      During the media visit, the Russian army also took the journalists to a local zoo where animals including bears and lions were kept in cages but appeared healthy.

      • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
        hexbear
        17
        2 years ago

        Lol thank goodness, that lion has been on my mind since the azovstal saga started; while the return to captivity is a bit of a shame I'm more glad to hear it's alright.

        • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
          hexbear
          17
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Can’t exactly have a wild lion roaming around a populated war zone in non-native areas without it normal prey. It will get hungry and get a taste of human flesh probably.

          • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
            hexbear
            17
            2 years ago

            No, of course that would not be fun; but also I can't help but imagine a world where after a long journey making friends along the way he escapes to the steppe in the heartwarming feel-good story of the year that critics are calling "A truly wonderful coming-of-age tale, about overcoming adversity through the power of friendship."

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]M
      hexbear
      19
      2 years ago

      Everyone always talks about the Lion of Mariupol these days but never ask how the Lion of Damascus is doing.

  • @W_Hexa_W
    hexbear
    16
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    deleted by creator

    • Cunigulus [they/them]
      hexbear
      13
      2 years ago

      It's so dumb. Canada is huge and they need a long-range interceptor. The F-35 just isn't right for Canada at all. They'd be much better off with a 4th gen fighter with longer range. Ideally they'd be able to get Soviet-designed fighters, as the two countries have very similar requirements, but that's not happening for obvious reasons.