spinning that lathe as hard as I can
Russia doesn't have remotely the same imperialist structures built up to repress and exploit other countries even if they put military bases in them. if Russia ever develops those systems in a multipolar arrangement and starts debt-trapping countries, then yes, that would be worthy of critique
you really do need to have a bunch of different factors in aggregate to make an imperialist. if it was just having some sort of military presence in another country or just being owed debt by another country or just, hell, having an extractive trade relationship with another country with deals that aren't very fair, then most countries could be described as imperialist.
and it is plausible to me that the attempt by some people to dilute the term "imperialist" into all these little pieces and then applying them to, say, China, or Russia, or Iran, or even comically enough Palestine has the intentional or unintentional effect to weaken the condemnation of the US. it's essentially to make the words "imperialist" and "morally bad, according to my moral system" synonyms, in the same way that the West transformed "democratic" and "morally good, according to my moral system" into synonyms, such that "non-democratic" countries that are actually more democratic than "democratic" countries will still be called non-democratic, because the percentage approval ratings and the reduction in poverty and inequality among the demos has been made totally distinct from the concept of "democracy", which now merely consists of "the ability of at least a significant number of people to put a ballot into a ballot box in a country with at least two parties, regardless of how similar those parties are and regardless of whether your ballot is actually likely to be counted and not just thrown away"
inschallah schniff
schniff one must observe the dialectic when one wisches to tie themselves to a mischle and then be fired at Tel Aviv. ze misschle is clearly a political sexual pathology, even psychosexual; ze representation of ze penisch and its natural antagonischt and yet desired deschtination schniff and scho on and scho forth. it is pure ideology, and any reaschonable perschon would want ze United States to invade ze Gaza Strip and oppose Ruschia in their imperialischt goals. I am a communisct by the way, of course, and scho on schniff.
step 1 towards the Mortal Engines future: mobile sheds
Purchasing Power Parity is a measure of the country's economy in terms of their own currency, rather than relevant to the dollar as GDP is typically measured. The reason why'd you want to do this is to gain a more "objective" sense of the size of a country's economy, outside of the whims of tariffs and taxes and transportation costs and other things which may affect what, say, a loaf of bread may cost in one country compared to another. PPP calculations often use hundreds of representative items to form an accurate measure of PPP.
It's tempting to be like "Oh, so what's even the point of measuring GDP in dollar terms then? It isn't representative of the size of economies if China and the US switch places, and by several trillion dollars!" The reason why we can't unfortunately just ignore GDP without PPP is because the dollar is the largest international reserve currency, with many goods being priced in it and most countries using it in trade, so it is actually relevant what the "dollar's perspective" (if you will) of economies is.
Though, honestly, I'd recommend moving away from GDP entirely, PPP or otherwise. Its usage as a very general average of economic growth tends to mask a lot of other relevant effects - electricity growth, industrial growth, resource extraction, poverty rates, quality of life, life expectancy, etc etc etc, all behind a single figure designed to suggest "Well, big number go up therefore economy must be gooder!" I don't think it really has that much predictive power. From the perspective of GDP, for example, Russia lasting this long and even winning against the combined power of every Western country is totally inexplicable - Russia has something like a fiftieth of the combined GDP of the West. It was a common joke back at the start of the war that Russia has the GDP of Italy and yet wants to challenge all of us!
And this isn't even mentioning that GDP is very goofy measure, because it measures all economic transactions. This sounds okay in theory, until you realize that - yes, the absolutely massive healthcare bills that reach into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a patient having a single major accident/medical issue; those all count towards GDP. What is superior: a hypothetical country where healthcare was very efficient and effective, with only small costs for patients (ideally paid through taxes and thus "free" when needed by a patient) and very good standards of care? Or a country where healthcare is very inefficient and extremely expensive, where most people go into extreme debt just to pay for necessary surgeries? According to GDP, the latter is a much bigger, and thus better, economy. And this applies for all major, unnecessary costs in an economy, including incredibly overpriced rent.
Because GDP is so easy to inflate, if a country's GDP goes down, then you know something has critically fucked up, especially in Western countries which are increasingly financialized and where things are getting more expensive and property owners like Blackrock are forming monopolies and thus able to jack up prices with little consequence. Even stagnation or only small growth in a Western country is really bad. It's why the status of being technically in a recession (2 quarters of negative GDP growth) is becoming less relevant of a measure of economic hardship. America isn't technically in a recession and yet the economy fucking sucks for the 90%, thanks to inflation and other such effects, but liberals just see the big GDP number and are utterly befuddled why people think the economy is bad when it's actually great according to that number, coming up with all sorts of conspiracies about the media instead of, like, exiting their bubble of rich investment bankers or media analysts and talking to poor people.
it would be extremely funny if we got to like 50k active users overnight and 95% of them were Yemenis
No, I think that him generally not substantially escalating is a sound strategy, albeit not cathartic for war viewers. Personally, I don't want to die in a nuclear blast. The only issue I really have with the Russians in the messaging department is that they promise something five times larger than they actually deliver, which makes their threats seem like a joke.
If the Russians merely told the truth, like "If you allow Ukraine to fire at our territory with Western weapons, then we will adapt our air defenses, shoot them down until they are depleted, retaliate in kind against the units firing them at us regardless of nationality, and then our commitment to delivering our war aims will steadfastly continue," rather than making vague-but-not-actually-vague threats about nuking Baltic cities or whatever the fuck, then it would be totally fine. I imagine a subset of people would be displeased that Russia isn't making bigger moves to combat the threats than just those things, but Russia already isn't making bigger moves to combat those threats, so you might as well just be relatively honest.
Though, this obviously isn't just a problem with Russia. The entire anti-Western bloc seems to have this overpromise, underdeliver issue in response to whatever imperial scheme that the Americans are trying this week. The only ones that I can't really critique are Hamas (they're actually on the goddamn ground resisting a genocide and attriting Israeli forces in awful conditions) and Yemen (a months-long blockade of the Red Sea while enduring attacks from the imperial hegemon is already more than anybody could ask of them and major expansion of operations to the Mediterranean is really going above and beyond). And, well, the DPRK too I suppose, though they're more secretive about whatever they get up to and aren't directly involved in a war (yet).
Everybody else - China, Iran, Hezbollah, you name it - they've all had occasions where they make speeches promising to rain hellfire onto the imperialists or broadly similar sentiments, but it always feels like there should be a "...in 20-30 business days. Terms and conditions may apply." added on to the end. But honestly, I've found myself worrying about it much less lately than over 2022 and 2023. I mean, for starters, literally nobody gives a shit what I think. What, am I going to write a letter to Xi Jinping or Nasrallah saying that I've officially gotten tired of their hesitation? Why on god's green earth should they give a shit what a 20-something year old British dude thinks about their tactics? So by this point I've accepted that this is how things are going to be so I might as well try and further my understanding of the world and prepare for imperial breakdown to intensify here so I can do my part in the left-wing groups that will (hopefully) increase in power/popularity.
For the first time in a year, opinion polls show that a majority of the Israeli population would back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reelection if ballots were to be held today. A survey presented by Channel 12 News on 29 May found that 36 percent of the electorate prefers Netanyahu over opposition leader and war cabinet member Benny Gantz when asked, “Who is better suited to serve as prime minister?” This marks a significant month-to-month surge from April, when support for Gantz stood at 35 percent, and Netanyahu lagged behind at 29 percent.
In the new survey, the current premier is also seven points ahead of opposition leader Yair Lapid and two points ahead of former prime minister Naftali Bennett. Netanyahu's party, Likud, also saw favorable results in the latest poll, picking up 21 of the Knesset's 120 seats. Nevertheless, Gantz's National Unity party edged ahead, picking up 25 seats. The Midgam Institute conducted the survey on Wednesday among 503 respondents via internet and phone, representing the entire population of Israel aged 18 and over.
The Zionists deserve a leader like Netanyahu. I'm glad to let them follow their wildly incompetent leader to their doom.
I believe that painting of King Charles was originally meant to depict all the red lines that Putin has let the West cross without escalating to the same degree, before the King's face was forced into it
Putin could literally state "If you send X equipment to Ukraine, I am going to fire 10 nuclear ICBMs directly at the White House at 3pm tomorrow." and I would sit back and relax as I know that the West will proceed to send that equipment and Putin will proceed to do nothing.
why did they name their city the default name in a citybuilding simulator
and you just have to bring this stuff back to us. a sacrificial lamb, posting a bad take so that people can practice their dunking