I do appreciate things like this. It lifts my spirits a bit. That and you know how incredibly arrogant and foolish the US is.

I was not aware of the fact that the sanctions on the USSR were lifted so late only to be replaced by that other act, it does show a history of US hostility and antagonism to Russia that goes beyond what I’d been aware of.

Though it does bring up other questions. Xi has pushed for example for upholding globalism, for global trade and against US protectionism and attempts at decoupling and tariffs. Putin is saying no, that era is over, maybe just for Russia admittedly but that it has happened. That is Russia is an example of a decoupling. Of western capitalists decoupling from an economy. Not as big an economy as China, but it’s an example of that, and an example of sycophant, fanatical liberals in Europe crashing their industry, crushing their profitability in the near-term in order to uphold the line of the western US-led world order.

Which circles back to me, the question of decoupling between China and the west. Something many doubt can happen. Yet many would have doubted Europe would do this so eagerly either or that there wouldn’t be reconciliation.

Russia is not the size of China but I think it looks ever more likely that whether by hook or by crook the western empire planners really want to decouple from China and my money is still betting that they manage to do so to some great degree. Maybe not complete, likely not complete but to a great degree. To such a degree that there will come a point, likely a US instigated fight over Taiwan and that used as a rallying cry and excuse to do this as the Russian response to Ukraine was used as a similar pretext. That after that point you’ll be back to bloc politics. You’ll have the bloc of Russia, DPRK, China, Vietnam, Iran rather tightly knit, then also BRICS a bit more loosely knit with India trying to take as much Chinese business from to replace it with regards to the west as it can which kind of mirrors their cold war non-aligned thing but is really in this case much more clearly aligned IMO with stabbing China and trying to make an Indian miracle off of the destruction of China and its place in the world economy, to usurp that. And you’ll have the NATO bloc of the US, plus EU with a few dissenters perhaps plus its occupied vassals in SK, Japan, British holdings in Australia, etc. And the NATO bloc will be doing everything it can to strangle the non-NATO bloc, to cut off markets, resources, etc.

Which gets back to my thinking about both the grand chessboard and the US destabilization campaigns in the middle east (Iran is sadly the last obstacle, the zionists seem to be succeeding in not only their genocidal intentions but their land grabs to expand their colonial state, Syria has fallen, Yemen resists but has little ability to project power aside from harassing shipping nearby, Lebanon is in a bad state) as well as the US moves under Trump and Biden and earlier to secure the world’s waterways and ports. These two things together in theory allow the US to deny the Russia/China bloc overland routes via west Asia to African markets and resources as well as block them from access to markets in Latin/South America. Thus the US and Europe are not options for this bloc in selling or buying beyond limited quantities and the US aims to deny them most of the rest of the developing world to isolate them from these and to squeeze and attempt to exploit those regions themselves and ultimately engineer a collapse of the Russia/China bloc into either in-fighting or balkanization of one or both or color revolution.

There’s also the fact that climate change wades into this against those parts of the global south and if the US bloc can keep them down and isolated long enough climate change is going to start gut-punching both regions for the US bloc.

My own knowledge is limited to statements by public intellectuals and policy-makers, think-tank heads that are printed in places like RT. We disagree, that’s fine and I have no right to demand of you things I myself have not furnished.

I don’t have the energy to quote reply you back but needless to say I (still) have my view. Russians are no smarter or “stupider” than any other capitalists I think, liberalism, capitalism is a kind of blinders, some see more, some see less. Whether those people who see more have and retain power and clarity is another matter. Russia’s eyes have been forced open a bit by Ukraine but how far it seems impossible to say given the often contradictory nature of public statements and the need to be coy for negotiations.

I was strongly influenced by this highly upvoted comment: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/6061085

Saying their actions now in the heat of the Ukraine moment show a sustained change I think are premature. That’s like saying a child who burned their fingers once and is now staying away from the stove has learned once and for all, maybe, then again maybe not, they could have to learn again several times as maybe this time the flame got them but they still haven’t learned to respect not touching the hot iron griddles. Let us see where things go once peace is won in Ukraine.

So I’m not proposing anything too fantastical. Nothing that isn’t drawing on historical precedent.

I have strong critical support for Russia but it is critical. And I wish others to be critical and not think too highly of the imposter that stands in the place of the USSR who for only mercenary motives is at times on our side. It’s not the time to tar and feather them in front of liberals of course. But I wonder, and I worry.

As always optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect.

Prices of electronics would skyrocket (likely permanently for the west) and there would be shortages. The west would either cut off buying from fabs there immediately leading to a supply crunch or they’d blow them up also leading to a supply crunch but one impacting the mainland as well.

It’s definitely a little upsetting in that I’d like such things preserved for evidence for any eventual proceedings long down the line in the far future but not surprising I suppose and part of me assumed most such evidence would indeed be destroyed. Funny how the USSR didn’t destroy its records nor did GDR when they fell. Even the Nazis failed to destroy most of their documentation. The reasons being I suppose bureaucratic insulation, layers and layers of it foiling most normal attempts and completeness but they’re being I assume quite thorough here by just bulldozing the whole structure down.

WHY is it so hard to imagine that next month or year Putin has a heart attack and just falls over dead and that his replacement has some new ideas, that a new clique, a new way of thinking pushes into power?

The evidence repeatedly shows Russian leadership is full of Johnny-come-lately-capitalists who love Europe and continue to have delusions of being respected by the US and treated as some sort of equal or partner in recognition of their position and size. An impossibility.

I mean let’s not forget. Let’s not forget. Russia was a socialist state, they were a state ruled by an in-power communist party and they got couped with fairly minimal effort thanks to star-struck fools at the helm. Then in comes Yeltsin who did everything the west and CIA asked short of dismantling the country or shipping the entire KGB archives to Langley. This all happened within the past 40 years.

Let’s also not forget that when the Chinese wrapped up the CIA’s spy network they declared it to be a disaster there and in the middle east but stated that their Russian operations were still using an older system and had been spared. Thus it can reasonably be assumed the CIA still has contacts and some maneuvering there and might even be able to exert the puff of air, the push of a hair needed to tilt an evenly weighted scale the way they want.

Let’s not forget that Wagner turned on Putin because of their weirdo leader’s desire for glory and had a nearly unprotected path to march on Moscow with little the Russian military could do. The fact it happened at all shows things are not so stable in Russia.

Putin consolidated support and power which meant Wagner never was going to really succeed. When he’s out of the picture who knows. The chairs will be re-arranged, alliances and loyalties behind the scenes will shift and there will be opportunities and risks. In the vacuum a new struggle and perhaps new policy. Maybe things will endure as they are, maybe not. We don’t know, we’re not privy to that info.

This idea that Russia is loyal to China is just not true. The late USSR betrayed the lesser SSRs, Gorbachev basically dealt directly with the Americans in dissolving the GDR over the heads of their own leadership. The history of Russia in the past 40 years has not been one of being a loyal friend but being a sucker for far too long. The Chinese try and buy what friendship they can but the Russian leadership looks on uneasily at what they could have been, at a society structured not for the benefit of the few as Russia is but for the many and they cannot help but worry about that idea catching back on at home and causing them terrible trouble. Socialism anywhere is a threat to capitalism everywhere. But it’s especially a threat when it’s on your border, it’s much more successful than you are and it reminds your people of a time within living memory of the older generations and risks sabotaging your plans to hold down the fort with reactionary cultural shifts.

They are natural enemies. This is a fact. Russia is with China so long as it benefits them BUT they are not capable of rationally evaluating where that line might be. Short-sighted desires for profits, delusions of integration with the west. I mean the imperial core itself is suffering severe problems of its own planners not understanding the material reality, how can a bunch of late to the party capitalists drunk on the propaganda of that from the 90s hope to be better?

The weight of gravity alone draws Russia towards Europe and the EU. It cannot hope to influence China and central Asia is underdeveloped and apparently uninteresting, certainly it doesn’t have the historical looted wealth of Europe. But Russia is big enough it hopes it can influence Europe. Perhaps not rule but have a big say, be the big capitalist at the table of Europe, that is their dream, not to be the capitalist lesser partner of China which is a greater power than they are.

The biggest thing going for China is just how arrogant and unable to give on anything the US leadership is. How the concessions likely required to get Russia on their side RIGHT NOW with the current leadership are within the ability of the US purse to afford without surrendering world hegemony or their number 1 status but they refuse to do so because it wouldn’t look strong. Because they’re not used to offering concessions but dictating terms, because they don’t like sharing Europe. But there are always fools to match any situation. We just have to hope they’re not near the levers of power in Russia now and don’t get any nearer to them in the next 5-10 years.

It’s not presently very likely I admit, but it’s possible and it’s a big problem, a big worry, one of the big things that could swing things the way of the US this century.

It’s infuriating to read writing like this. They meander into “oh it would be a horrible threat to blah blah blah” but then sentences later admit actually no it wouldn’t. Is this a publication or a college essay of some student trying to pad out page length?

I cannot believe someone who writes like this has any influence on policy. Most likely the US intends to use Taiwan as an excuse to isolate China. Whether it falls or stands, the point is to instigate a conflict, even if it’s just a Chinese blockade, use that to rally the world to the “defense of democracy”, to push decoupling, sanctions, cultural backlash (remember freedom fries), etc as part of the larger, grander strategy of decoupling and isolation of China.

Now with Trump doing ridiculous things like slapping fines on Chinese-made ships docking in the US we’re already well on the path towards a decoupling I think much to the horror of large portions of the bourgeoisie but it’ll be too late and something like this is aiming to bully any holdouts with overwhelming force of public opinion, propaganda organs, and state policy to decrease or cut presence entirely in China just like they pushed with Russia. And while reinvestment with Russia may occur as an attempt to draw Russia away from China the empire’s planners fully intend to isolate and cook China.

Frankly I worry less about the Taiwan situation and outcome of any fighting there than I do the overarching strategy. I worry our bourgeoisie might genuinely want some sort of dark enlightenment rvturn to techno-feudalism thing. And on a more grand scale I worry about Russia. I do not trust them, they are not truly China’s ally and their constant attempts to make up with the west even as it drives more knives into them is proof they have no serious intention of a permanent eastward turn. All it takes is for another faction in Russia to take power, one willing to be the US’s little number 2 over the EU rather than a true equal for China to have issues there.

An aside but I love how the author casually tosses out the use of nuclear weapons as “catastrophic” for the US, no, that would not be catastrophic that would be fatal for the US. Because China has a no first use policy and if they’re using them on the US mainland it’s not to try and knock out a naval port but because the US has already hit the Chinese mainland with nuclear weapons and we’re in a full exchange where everyone but the bourgeoisie and empire planners rushed off to bunkers dies including smarmy little shits like this who are nowhere near important enough to be given space in the bunker.

They’re last I heard absolutely neutered. Follow the US imperialist line and are a joke. I am not an expert or Japanese this is just from recollections on discussions I’ve seen about them in the past.

It makes sense, Japan has been occupied by the US since 1945 and they crushed and killed the original communist movement and have kept a veritable dictatorship of the LDP or whatever running for quite some time.

It is good for western capitalists to have interests in doing business with and normal relations with China. It is good they stand to lose money and “line go up” were the west to decouple. It’s bad from a lot of other standpoints but when the alternative may be war or war sooner well it doesn’t look as bad though going forward I think China needs to take a look at the health of the products being sold at least to prevent them inflicting an obesity epidemic.

Some good answers here already. Purely from consequences it’s necessary to hold people to account. For example even if you didn’t believe in free will at all which is kind of a maximalist argument along the lines of your point (that people are influenced by outside factors, are indoctrinated, are not entirely responsible for their thinking and hate), most agree we still should hold the r*pist to account, we should still hold the murderer to account, we should still hold the arsonist who burned down an apartment with people inside to account. That really only those in the grips of total psychosis, who are suffering from a brain malfunction, who cannot at all tell reality from fantasy are held somewhat harmless for their actions beyond being restrained and treated until no longer a threat to others.

This doesn’t mean it’s not human and somewhat normal to have some pity, to see the humanity in the eyes of even a murdering colonist, the humanity they gave up with their choices to become monsters.

But some people commit acts as adults so far beyond what we can forgive that no apology can suffice, no amount of pleading that they’ve seen the error of their ways can be enough. The extremely rare 1 in a million who decides to atone by working themselves to death in service to their victims can be left well enough alone but most let’s be honest don’t take any actual action beyond crying and booing their own sadness and trauma and playing the victim.

I’m sorry I just don’t think someone who bombs and kills little kids and posts memes laughing about it can do anything to change the weight of their actions and what any decent society must rule is the consequence for such. Those most directly responsible for the violence, for spreading the indoctrination to others, for defending the violence (propagandists) are soaked in blood that can never be washed off. There are those whose situations are more nuanced but there are many whose situation is not at all.

As an aside I look with some amount of skepticism at those who propose that in the west we could at some enormous scale what China did at a very small scale to a small number of high ranking war criminals and a former emperor. Quite frankly the indoctrination runs far deeper here in the west than in China. Liberalism, capitalism have been here for hundreds of years. It’s interwoven with religious dogma, with cultural dogma that is entirely part of the liberal super-structure unlike in China whose culture still had strong communal non-individualist (if feudal/peasant) elements to it. You try and shame a Chinese person from that era with their ancestors and community responsibility and most feel it pretty deeply, you try and shame a westerner and they scoff at you because they, their parents, their parents’ parents were all raised in individualism, in a contempt for the community, in a fuck the world and treat others as stepping stones mentality, in an economic mode that directly rewarded and venerated this behavior.

Frankly in that situation you’re not going to have success, you’re going to have relapses be as common as any success if not more-so. The easier solution, the more merciful for all involved including the millions of jailers you’d need under such a scheme is triaging. It’s the Nuremberg solution for the worst of the worst, for the bottom rungs for whom chance of success is much stronger, re-education.

That kind of thinking is the kind of blind dogmatism that Marxism-Leninism rejects. We say for each nation, for each struggle, learn from the common path but adapt to the unique circumstances rather than trying to copy paste as the Maoists (MLM) do.

You need to take care of yourself and survive too and thrive as well. And if I’m being honest given your career desires to screen-write I think another even closeted Marxist screenwriter is a lot more valuable for the movement than another part-time, distracted, under-employed, and sad cadre. So go for it and don’t feel bad.

I don’t buy this at all. They’ve been European holdings since before that doctrine was established and right through it. The cartoons I’ve seen of Uncle Sam drawing a line along the ocean seem to exclude them and start off the east coast of the US, encircle the Caribbean and encircle South America.

Geographically many consider them part of Europe, certainly not part of North America in most maps.

Also US never really cared that much about Monroe Doctrine either. The British came and beat up on the Argentineans over the Falklands. US easily could have thrown up some ships in their way and said “fuck off” or otherwise attempted to dissuade them but didn’t care to. It’s never been an ironclad rule or commitment.

And as Europe has been in vassalage to the US since WW2 (well all the empire holding parts, certain parts only became vassals after the USSR was destroyed) it shouldn’t really matter.

It’s more the US just moving in on its vassals colonial holdings because of strategic importance and the fact they want to manage a choke-point like that directly with all the attendant power over the land and building whatever bases they want, bulldozing what they want, etc to meet whatever enlarged capabilities are desired and to fortify these places as necessary.

Happy Birthday comrade!

Lol he’s really trying to go there. I doubt they (SCOTUS) let him do it though because Biden was senile and there might be genuine argument his staffers and family were making these calls there is a chance they try and do a one-time only exemption just so Trump can be petty.

American farmers are going to get screwed.

I keep on wondering if this is all part of some grander plan rather than just haphazard ill management and ignorance. I have to assume the bourgeoisie have a plan. It’s all good and fun to imagine they’re all fail-sons running around like chickens with their heads cut off but I think there has to be something. It might be ridiculous but I’m going to be subject to it.

What if it’s a good thing that they get screwed in eyes of the bourgeoisie? Just means more assets that can be bought up by the bourgeoisie to have more direct control and levers over things like food to manipulate prices, availability, to wield power of punishment and reward, to starve or flood an area with abundance. Any of the larger companies can either weather the storm or demand government bail-outs.

Trump and his backers may think they can starve the world as a form of soft power, that they can just inflict famine on those uppity Arabs and kill them off or cull their numbers at least. Bill Gates is obsessed with population control. The climate change hell is coming and with it lots of refugees, what if you were a bourgeoisie and therefore amoral and wanted to thin out the herd of refugees that would soon hit your borders or those of your outposts and climate fortress partners? You might try starving them, cutting medical supplies, hoping for plagues to ravage them and thin their numbers and discipline them to agree to whatever you want in exchange for resumption of aid conditioned on doing exactly what the US demands in writing.

I think it’s just part of a shifting to a strategy of hard imperialism and as usual this kind of transition will hit the domestic proletariat of the imperial core hard as well but the fact is the world was slipping from their grasp.

Here’s a big lesson that the imperialists and bourgeoisie may have learned and we don’t realize they learned it: their propaganda apparatus wasn’t all powerful, it failed in Ukraine when it comes to those in the global south.

And this may be a re-assessment that it’s therefore not fit to task and must be completely restructured and how better to do so than with their move to no longer appeal as this beacon of “progressive values” to speak to minorities that broadly speaking had consensus for decades but instead to sell themselves as Russia does as a bastion of “traditional values” against “woke” which will be cast as China. China is woke, woke is China, communism, communism, communism! China wants to take your “traditional values”. China wants to gay marry you, China has trans rights, etc, etc, etc. This plays pretty well in parts of the world the US is competing against Russia in such as Africa and well much of the developing world including religious Latin America. All these places full of people who can be whipped up with propaganda against gay and trans people and appealed to embrace a kind of traditional values. Hilariously this could be just imitation of Russia rather than some well-thought out restructuring as part of a grander ideological project I suppose but the effect is basically the same either way.

But they have been speaking in media for some time too as China and the US being in a “grand battle of civilizations” with the US cast by these reactionaries like Thiel and others as this “traditional values Christian civilization which created the modern world and all is good within it” against the “woke” (stand-in for communist and will be used interchangeably) China. They hope to use this I think to get people whose material interests are not with the US to align with it anyways against China, to legitimize strong-men and dictators they plan to place to disrupt and displace Chinese influence and trade.

1. Network effect. The people they care about are already in those places. Their family, grandma, a distant part of the family on the other side of the world, their favorite celebrities, people they went to college with, etc.

2. They don’t know about the fediverse.

3. They don’t care about privacy or things like an open web or corporate control. They “have nothing to hide” and think it’s pointless to resist corporate enclosure of the internet plus the centralized platforms are free and store their photos for them and take only things they can’t see.

Woke war criminal Putin

Woke

WTF. At this point it doesn’t even mean anything, woke is just an angry slur divorced even from the culture war pro-bigotry resentment that spurred them to use it hatefully in the first place in a forced appropriation of progressive terminology.

I expect Trump will try and get concessions on at least one of those from Putin and I would not be surprised if Putin ultimately agrees on something in exchange for US support in doing regime change in Ukraine so Russia doesn’t have to push its military force all the way to the far west of the country and try and deal with dismantling the whole thing itself. No NATO is too important to give up. No NATO peacekeepers the same (at least in any meaningful number). That leaves the options of Trump demanding and getting something like denazification not being completed though they are demilitarized in exchange Russia gets the 4 Donbass regions and Crimea recognized and the rest of Ukraine becomes a rump state of extremely angry nationalists possibly under patrol by a UN mandate peacekeeping force instead of NATO which the west will spin as them stopping Russia from taking all of Ukraine.

I admit it’s possible that Russia gets all its objectives but I have the feeling Putin would rather not fight Ukraine fall of Berlin style where the west supplies them to fight to the last Ukrainian and keeps the sanctions on and in order to get sanctions relief and international recognition for the territorial reality I expect Putin will be flexible in some way to allow the west some amount of cope-laden face-saving. Ukraine is going to get fucked over hard by western capitalists of course and I expect that any deal will include respecting their grabs of resources and possibly striking discount deals on minerals and such from the new Russian regions under decade+ contracts at very favorable terms for the west or something like that.

Second cross-posting this on hexbear, particularly https://hexbear.net/c/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns. They have a MUCH larger and more active trans community there and I’m sure they’d be able to offer you advice.

I think right now federation may still be down? Not sure but it’s worth a try. :(

Try this link and see if you can cross-post or interact via it maybe: [email protected] (Oof, looks like it’s not working, only old cached content :( )

I certainly hope not but I’m not about to take the word of people who were strung along and suckered by the west so long and who still so desperately want to rejoin them. People can talk of this “turn to the east” and indeed Russia has but also at every chance they state their desire to get in the better graces of the west and work together. China will need to be careful and lucky and we’ll have to hope the western leadership remains inept.

Much as Moscow might call itself a Euro-Asian country the fact is Moscow, Leningrad, etc are all in the far west of the country, the leadership including top bourgeoisie has long sought integration with the west, they buy their mansions in the UK and the EU and docked their yachts there and went on frequent vacations there and loved going clubbing and boozing and picking up people for sex parties. The west will have a strong pull, a siren’s song on Russia for many years, if not decades down the road that Russia will have to resist. There is a faction aware of this and they are in power, but they could lose power just as easily and be replaced with those who’d sell out every Russian child in an instant for the chance to live the European high life again in subservient integration.

I believe Lavrov is sincere and intelligent on this and other matters. But I also believe he’s old and like Putin could die or be replaced or pushed aside.

Yeah I predict next Trump may turn to big pressure on Russia (more sanctions and whatever else he can muster) to attempt to get them to agree to a “temporary” (not really wink) ceasefire which allows France, UK, etc to say conditions are met and mobilize their troops as ‘peackeepers’ into Ukraine along the western bank of the Dnieper to prevent Russia getting any further. Of course if Russia is wise they understand this plan and won’t agree to a ceasefire to prevent this escalation which will result in nothing more than media sobbing (including from reactionaries who were acting friendly towards Russia of late) about how unreasonable they’re being, about how they’re the ones preventing peace now and how horrible and warlike they are and so on. After a while of this they may come around to offering Russia better terms in desperation or maybe up the weapons supply but I feel the US is so focused on China they’ll just find a way to offload it to Europe and say Europe lost it and the corrupt Ukrainians lost it and Biden lost it, etc.