What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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---|---|---|---|
🦋 | 15 | 3.71% | |
🦇 | 115 | 28.47% | |
🪰 | 12 | 2.97% | |
🐦 | 67 | 16.58% | |
dragonfly | 94 | 23.27% | |
🦟 | 14 | 3.47% | |
🐝 | 87 | 21.53% | |
Total: | 404 votes |
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stephenthinkpad posted:The way Washington does geopolitic is always assign a bad guy in each region. In Caribbean, its Cuba; in South America its Venezuela; Middle East, Iran; East Europe, Russia. You just rile up the bad blood from history and get your military bases in rest of the countries to defense against the red-headed bastard countries. The official badguy in South Asia is Myanmar. In any case, Russia was a defeated country in the 90s already. We could get Yeltsin to do whatever we wanted with the right inducements and the Russian economy was a petri dish for all the worst neoliberal ideas ever conceived in American academia. There was zero reason whatsoever to treat Russia as a badguy, and in fact we didn't want to. Russia only started becoming antagonistic to the West because of how arrogantly the Bush administration was treating Moscow during the War on Terror, both on a personal level and with the botched ballistic missile defense system we tried throwing up in eastern Europe. We didn't fully wake up to the reality of Russian antagonism to Western interests until the Russia-Georgia War. TBH I think the most pressure to keep the antagonistic attitude towards Russia actually came from our eastern European clients, especially Poland and the Baltics. The idea of an essentially villainous Russian character comes almost exclusively from Europe, even after all the Cold War propaganda. A lot of Cold Warriors were even willing to let those old grudges be bygones because they imagined Russia could be an ally in the war on our true enemy: Red China. Tom Clancy wrote his worst novel about it. Pener Kropoopkin has issued a correction as of 15:34 on Jun 21, 2023 |
# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:29 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 12:16 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:In any case, Russia was a defeated country in the 90s already. We could get Yeltsin to do whatever we wanted with the right inducements and the Russian economy was a petri dish for all the worst neoliberal ideas ever conceived in American academia. There was zero reason whatsoever to treat Russia as a badguy, and in fact we didn't want to. Russia only started becoming antagonistic to the West because of how arrogantly the Bush administration was treating Moscow during the War on Terror, both on a personal level and with the botched ballistic missile defense system we tried throwing up in eastern Europe. We didn't fully wake up to the reality of Russian antagonism to Western interests until the Russia-Georgia War. It isn't really just the Dubya though, the Clinton administration has treated the Russians with remarkable hostility considering the state they were in and how much they were turning to the West. In addition, it was almost certain that the West was arming the Chechens through Georgia across that entire period, which in the end, weakened their best ally (Yeltsin), and invariably lead to a return to Russian nationalism under Putin. Bush kept on pushing across the aughts, and then Obama (with Hillary as his Sec of state until 2013) would engineer what would become Euromadian. Trump was really the only president since the 1970s (and disarmament) that tried to tap the breaks a bit, and that is why, more then any other reason, he is reviled. The Baltic states and even Poland really didn't have a problem with Russia through the 90s and much of the 00s until there was a very hard shift to the far-right and Russophobia in the 2010s.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:37 |
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US allying with Russia to fight China was the correct grand strategy \though. Up to around 2010, the US still had chance to make the alliance with Putin. The problem is US completely lost the concept of grand strategy and geopolitic post cold war.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:40 |
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stephenthinkpad posted:US allying with Russia to fight China was the correct grand strategy \though. Up to around 2010, the US still had chance to make the alliance with Putin. I don't think we "lost the concept" of how to do grand strategy and geopolitics, so much as being the global hegemon is an inherently losing position. There's nowhere to go from the top but down, and in the last 30 years we've been trying to put out fires ALL OVER THE WORLD that threaten the interests of ourselves and our First World partners. We assumed that hyperpower would last forever and we'd be able to bash people over the head indefinitely for not getting with our program, while China was lapping us as an industrial power and Putin was reclaiming state power in Russia by wresting it from the oligarchs. Our grand strategies were being employed for the geopolitical goal of turning practically everyone into a US client state, even if it meant invading and occupying several countries.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:46 |
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Frosted Flake posted:will be characterized by fragmented [ochagovyy] or non-linear combat. You can probably translate that to something like flashpoint.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:46 |
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stephenthinkpad posted:US allying with Russia to fight China was the correct grand strategy \though. Up to around 2010, the US still had chance to make the alliance with Putin. A lot of it was emotional rather than logical, the American elite, particularly boomers had grown up being taught that not only the Soviets/Communists were the real threat that must be destroyed, but Russia as a concept. This is something the Russians never really got, they thought they problem was just political, it wasn't. Putin and other Russian liberals hated communism as much as American liberals "lets just be friends etc etc" but a fundamental part of liberalism is indoctrinated racial hatred (and it is), and that just wouldn't go away. It made more sense for the US to back off and/or at least play Russia off China, they couldn't, and as China economically grew, they became too indispensable, so it eventually became a "everything on Russia" strategy. They aren't going to give up easily on it, but it seems Russia finally figured it out.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:49 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:I don't think we "lost the concept" of how to do grand strategy and geopolitics, so much as being the global hegemon is an inherently losing position. There's nowhere to go from the top but down, and in the last 30 years we've been trying to put out fires ALL OVER THE WORLD that threaten the interests of ourselves and our First World partners. We assumed that hyperpower would last forever and we'd be able to bash people over the head indefinitely for not getting with our program, while China was lapping us as an industrial power and Putin was reclaiming state power in Russia by wresting it from the oligarchs. the us is being caught off guard by it's own hegemony eroding like a frog being boiled in a pot. the project for the new american century was proven demonstrably and unambiguously not viable by 2006 and there was never a pivot to anything tangible tech and finance will probably save the US tho, and by extension the world Egg Moron has issued a correction as of 20:17 on Jun 21, 2023 |
# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:50 |
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Egg Moron posted:the project for the new american century was proven demonstrably and unambiguously not viable by 2006 and there was never a pivot to any tangible It is pretty "funny" that the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations persisted, in the absence of any genuine ideological motivation, because private interests could grift the US government by expanding public-private partnerships. We had to defend Iraqi "democracy" so KBR could electrocute Green Berets in the shower.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:55 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:I don't think we "lost the concept" of how to do grand strategy and geopolitics, so much as being the global hegemon is an inherently losing position. There's nowhere to go from the top but down, and in the last 30 years we've been trying to put out fires ALL OVER THE WORLD that threaten the interests of ourselves and our First World partners. We assumed that hyperpower would last forever and we'd be able to bash people over the head indefinitely for not getting with our program, while China was lapping us as an industrial power and Putin was reclaiming state power in Russia by wresting it from the oligarchs. “Creating fire all over the world" is not a grand strategy. You have to couple it with some kind of financial one-two punch like the Asian financial crisis to suck to money out of the region to make it profitable. You can argue "trying to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into Japan II" was a grand strategy. After that fall, there was no more grand strategy.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:58 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:lol Starting to get a sense one of the reasons Russian army isn't doing another blitz is because concentrating enough force for a spearhead that can punch through a defensive line sounds like a bad idea.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 15:58 |
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fizzy posted:Members of Congress have repeatedly pressed defence department leaders on how closely the US is tracking its aid to Ukraine to ensure that it is not subject to fraud or ending up in the wrong hands. The Pentagon has said it has a “robust programme” to track the aid as it crosses the border into Ukraine and to keep tabs on it once it is there, depending on the sensitivity of each weapons system. Yeah lol the Pentagon can't (or more likely, won't) keep track of its poo poo in the US, it sure as hell isn't going to keep track of what gets sent overseas.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:00 |
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stephenthinkpad posted:“Creating fire all over the world" is not a grand strategy. You have to couple it with some kind of financial one-two punch like the Asian financial crisis to suck to money out of the region to make it profitable. The important thing about the Asian financial crisis is that the "Tiger Countries" were already dependent on US support and didn't have much of a say in how we undermined them. You couldn't do the same sort of thing with MENA or South America, because those states are already independently powerful. There's no one neat trick you could pull on oil rich countries, and we tried with Venezuela.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:02 |
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Lostconfused posted:Starting to get a sense one of the reasons Russian army isn't doing another blitz is because concentrating enough force for a spearhead that can punch through a defensive line sounds like a bad idea. It probably makes sense to wear down their capacity to fight over a longer time, and then only advance after their forces are so attritioned that they can't sustain a coordinated defense.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:02 |
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Ardennes posted:Btw, that river crossing was almost all BMP-1s in Luhansk suggesting it mostly Ukrainian vehicles. No one thought it at the time Lostconfused posted:https://greatwarchannel.medium.com/...B0-922630a9ab71
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:10 |
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Enjoy posted:the thread of theseus
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:16 |
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Ardennes posted:A lot of it was emotional rather than logical, the American elite, particularly boomers had grown up being taught that not only the Soviets/Communists were the real threat that must be destroyed, but Russia as a concept. This is something the Russians never really got, they thought they problem was just political, it wasn't. Putin and other Russian liberals hated communism as much as American liberals "lets just be friends etc etc" but a fundamental part of liberalism is indoctrinated racial hatred (and it is), and that just wouldn't go away. China did alot of hard works to Russia to get Russia on the Chinese side. Jiang settled all border disputes with Russia in the 90s, none of these dispute settlement were "favorable" to China in the Chinese public; China continue buying more Russian weapons from Russia than they need to even after China had decent copies of Russian stuff to keep Russia MIC working (which also have close ties with Putin) China continue signing new big pipeline project with Russia, but only at Russia schedule. Like Russia didn't do Serbia II until Nordstream II got shut down. If you have to work with Russian's schedule, you can't plan for the cheapest energy. China also delay the building or more central Aisan railroad in the stan countries until Russia gave the greenlight. In other words, China respect the legacy Russia sphere of influence in former Soviet republics. US didn't do any of that when they lease Kyrgyzstan air base to fight taliban. Also smaller stuff like Russia navy ship shelling Chinese fishing boats because they were in the wrong water, Beijing always try to keep them low profile in Chinese media to not sour the civilian relationship. Diplomacy aint easy. And the Americans have no loving idea how much work China did to get Russia on their side.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:16 |
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Yeah, basically it was a series of battles, but the very large number of particular un-upgraded BMP1s and a lack of specific Russian equipment would indicate it was mostly Ukrainian losses. It had been touted as a sign of massive Russian incompetency, but as evidence seems to suggest, it was probably the other way around (and in all honesty, the latest Ukrainian offensive doesn't look that different).
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:18 |
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Turtle Sandbox posted:I once met a senior enlisted marine sniper who gave us a speech about the importance of selling yourself, and how in every single interaction you can have, you are just trying to sell yourself. USA a private military corporation in search of a country, to loot.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:20 |
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Did I tell you about the book I was reading about Neocons? The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era? It came out last year and sort of follows up on Neoconservatism and the New American Century, explaining the mindset of a lot of these people. I can't say I understand it, because a lot of the ideas Wolfowitz and co had seem pants on head r-slurred, but the books at least present them. From what I understand, a bunch of Trotskyist Jews in the United States became obsessed with destroying the Soviet Union. At the same time, their belief in what the academics - not me! - call Jewish Exceptionalism, they developed fantastic antipathy towards African Americans, and intense identification with the state of Israel. Norman Finkelstein gets into these currents in his book. Now the consequences of those two attitudes I'm sure you're aware of. The authors content that Neoconservatism is just the foreign policy wing of Neoliberalism, and actually it's all the same ideology. When it came to the Soviet Union, they were almost a mirror of Solzhenitsyn. He hated the Soviet Union because of the Jews, more or less, they were Jewish Americans who hated the Soviet Union because of the Russians. Apparently before WW2, when the Jewish American population was not assimilated, everybody was obsessed with cossacks and pogroms, understandably so, and so the children and grandchildren of immigrants from the Pale, who usually came in waves after major pogroms were raised on these stories. Steven Spielberg, who is about the same age as the Neocons, includes a pogrom as the instigating incident in An American Tail, which is a children's story about Jewish immigration to America. Norman Jewison did the same thing in Fiddler on the Roof. I'm not saying this is 1619 Project type myth making, obviously the events in the Pale of Settlement had major consequences. Anyway, from the book's perspective, it seems that the events that occurred in the Pale of Settlement left a deep-seated distrust in this group towards Russia and, by extension, the Soviet Union. This mistrust, coupled with their disillusionment with Trotskyism and the left in general due to the realities of Stalin's purges and totalitarianism, gradually transformed into a strong anti-Soviet sentiment. They began to espouse a more interventionist and aggressive foreign policy stance, contrasting with the non-interventionist or isolationist positions that were prevalent among many conservatives at the time. This transition to Neoconservatism wasn't just ideological. It was facilitated by a shift in political alliance, from the left to the right of the political spectrum. Many of the early Neoconservatives were former liberals, also particularly Trots, who felt increasingly alienated by the perceived moral relativism and pacifism of the New Left during the 1960s and 1970s. They found a new home in the Republican Party, where their hardline stance against communism was welcomed. Just like they had moved from Democrats to Republicans in the 70's, with Trump, and to an extend during the Obama years, they moved back to being Democrats, but the authors content their underlying ideology never changed. In fact Clintonism made pivoting between parties seamless. They didn't have to worry about weaker support for Israel or supporting inner city "welfare queens", because the Democrats were now on board with all of the agendas that had caused them to leave the party in the first place. So the Biden Administration has just as many absolute deadeye psycho hawks as the Bush Administration, Nuland for example. Alright, so the USSR collapses. This left the old-school Neocons feeling a bit lost. They'd spent decades harping on about the big bad commies, now they were gone. The thing is, for these people, for reasons that are kinda-sorta understandable, the Soviet Union wasn't (just) the Evil Empire because it was communist, but because it was Russia. Which, incidentally, is why we've heard all of the exact same language reemerge overnight. It's not a confidence all of the Neocons and columnists within and adjacent to the Biden admin are talking about The Russian Empire, for them it's always been the same thing. Now, here's where Gen X comes in. While the old guard were having their existential crisis, the people just graduating into the think tanks and DC internships were getting their hands on Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama was telling them that liberal democracy had won, that it was the end point of our social evolution. No more big ideological battles, just the slow, steady march of capitalism and Western-style democracy. The Neocons believed they could ensure the End of History lasted forever. This was laid out in the 1992 memo Rumsfeld and a bunch of other guys circulated, title escapes me. America could ensure that another power never rose to challenge it by preempting Russia from reemerging as a power. They could ensure China never emerged as a competing power by controlling middle eastern oil that China would need to modernize in a way that threatened America. Just like America had attempted to use oil to contain the Japanese Empire and had used oil to collapse the USSR, control of major productions sites (Iraq) and alliance with the Saudis could prevent a European (Russia) or Asian (China) competitor to American power challenging the beautiful perfect world of the End of History. Alright, 9/11 and Iraq War, you all know the story there. Russia is on the back burner, except, yes the United States and Saudi Arabia support Jihadi networks in the Balkans and Chechnya, both of which harm Russian interests. It serves two purposes, keeping the Saudis happy and keeping Russia weak. I can very easily imagine that this was part and parcel of the Saudis manipulating oil prices so the Russian economy doesn't recover throughout the 90's. My contention is that throughout all of this the geopolitical position of Russia was irrelevant in their attitude for two reasons: 1) Russia could never be allowed to emerge as a power again, regardless of how friendly it was towards the US. Russia has too many resources within one country to be dependant, which risks it becoming independent, and so goes against American unipolarity. Here lies the root of all of those maps for "self-determination by indigenous people, freed from the yoke of the evil Rus". 2) Russia had to be punished for, I'm not going to say epigenetic trauma, just that many people in US foreign policy circles do not like Russians for a bunch of reasons tied to the culture of Jewish America in the 1930s-???'s when they were growing up and this has shaped their attitudes in some ways. I would compare this to Canadian foreign policy where Chrystia Freeland's attitude towards Russia has no relationship to what the Russian state is actually doing and we were always bound to be on a collision course for this reason. She's not alone in this, there are tonnes of Ukrainian Canadians in government, think tanks, media and the political parties with the same attitudes, and many other people who have either adopted those attitudes or who have formed alliances with Ukrainian Canadians as part of political coalitions and so adopted their viewpoint as foreign policy planks, like support for Israel in the US. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 16:36 on Jun 21, 2023 |
# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:32 |
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Frosted Flake posted:I mean, Zelensky is stupid, but a stupid guy being in charge is part of what I'm beginning to understand as a complex architecture designed to make sure that Russian populations in Ukraine couldn't meaningfully change politics within the country and that Russia could not respond to that with an 8 day military intervention.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:35 |
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lol also yeah, damned if he does, Diem'ed if he doesn't.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 16:37 |
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Ardennes posted:Honestly, I think it would have been a bad deal for the Russians in the long-run, theoretically, even if Ukraine if didn't join NATO and would abide by the caps, but almost certainly they would simply decommission old equipment for newer equipment (and keep the rest in "storage") while continuing to train all types of paramilitary forces that wouldn't be covered by the negotiations. There would have been another war eventually, but Ukraine would have been better prepared (and still fully backed by the US). Putin was looking for anyway to avoid a protracted war and a real breach with the West, but ultimately, it and a more centralized/militarized economy needed to happen. once the west got in there and started liberalizing there is no way Ukraine was going to get a more formidable army. imo it was now or never for their death drive - from here on out potential future troops are instead going to be killed by poverty and crushing austerity at an increasing rate
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 17:04 |
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Don't want to go all "my uncle who works at Nintendo" on you, but the extremely short explanation, from someone I know who was familiar with what was going on at this time, is that the Neocons are Trots that traded "global communist revolution" for "global democratic revolution", with democracy being western liberal democracy and all that entails.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 17:39 |
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Pistol_Pete posted:I've seen these exact same arguments made many times here on this site: The war will end when Russia capitulates and agrees to pay compensation for the invasion. How Russia is supposed to be forced to capitulate, when they don't intend to and aren't anywhere near being pressured into doing so is always left as an unanswered question. I think they're just supposed to see the error of their ways and feel guilty and ashamed. If the attacker doesn't achieve their goals within the turn limit then the defender wins and is awarded ante.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 17:56 |
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fizzy posted:Bad news for Russia - Russia has lost 221,460 troops, 3,997 tanks, 7,750 armored fighting vehicles, 6,645 vehicles and fuel tanks, 3,888 artillery systems, 614 multiple launch rocket systems, 372 air defense systems, 314 airplanes, 306 helicopters, 3,393 drones, and 18 boats during its invasion of Ukraine. WELL GO FIND THEM! Jesus Christ man, do I have to think of everything?
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:05 |
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I've been keeping tabs on some Wagner social media accounts and you wouldn't believe the depraved stuff they post https://twitter.com/AzraelOrchestra/status/1671550034242854912?s=20
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:09 |
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Organ Fiend posted:Don't want to go all "my uncle who works at Nintendo" on you, but the extremely short explanation, from someone I know who was familiar with what was going on at this time, is that the Neocons are Trots that traded "global communist revolution" for "global democratic revolution", with democracy being western liberal democracy and all that entails. Thats pretty much how this book on the Neocons I read almost 15 years ago put it out. They all started out as Trots arguing with Stalinists in the Cafeteria of City College in the 30s and by the 70s they're all about free markets and Ameircan democracy for all
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:09 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezTeIXCqr_M Fun video from the Wall Street Journal about how F-16s will change the course of the war. Take a drink for every time they imply soviet = bad. Also note how the video dunks on the Mig-29 and Su-27, then goes to great pains not to name what jets Russia is using when saying Russia uses good jets.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:09 |
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V. Illych L. posted:generally, people in western societies are terrified of engaging in substantive reasoning and much prefer to think formally. it was not always thus, but i suspect that the ever-increasing tendency towards intellectual rationalisation (in the sense that orange devil describes above) has something to do with this - liberalism is eroding our capacity to think explicitly in terms of preference and interest in favour of an ever-increasing emphasis on analytical categories even when those categories make no coherent sense. It's kind of an interesting topic that is hard to fully wrap your head around, because it's caused by a variety of things. I think that the nature of online discourse plays a not-insignificant factor, because it leads to this one-upmanship where you need to establish that your view is "beyond nuance and ideology."
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:13 |
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There's a book on Catholic Neocons that's incredibly dispiriting. They saw the murder of priests and nuns in Latin America and thought it was good because Liberation Theology was both a geopolitical threat to the United States and a spiritual attack on the Catholic Church (because it was a geopolitical threat to the US).
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:14 |
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Frosted Flake posted:There's a book on Catholic Neocons that's incredibly dispiriting. They saw the murder of priests and nuns in Latin America and thought it was good because Liberation Theology was both a geopolitical threat to the United States and a spiritual attack on the Catholic Church (because it was a geopolitical threat to the US). Chapo is right American Catholics are just protestants
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:23 |
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DancingShade posted:The Western corporate press is basically all government press with a variety of branding labels. After all they're the ones funding it all. The fundamental trick to the illusion of US media independence centers around our partisan politics. People are basically fooled into thinking our media isn't government propaganda because it will often be opposed to one of the two parties. "How can it be propaganda when it's opposed to the current President???" Of course, if you stop and think about it for a moment, you'll quickly realize that literally every single remotely mainstream US news media is aligned with one of those two parties. There isn't a single one that opposes both.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:23 |
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezTeIXCqr_M Yeah, they don’t want to mention that the f-16 is also from the 1970s and the f-16s Ukraine would get would be likely older models that would have the same constraints as their current aircraft, and that the superiority of the Russians is they use either updated models or different jets. Also, by the end of the year is a ridiculous date to retrain a pilot on a completely different platform, I assume it will go the way of current NATO training.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:24 |
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adebisi lives posted:I've been keeping tabs on some Wagner social media accounts and you wouldn't believe the depraved stuff they post "The Reddit has breached containment."
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:26 |
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Ardennes posted:Yeah, they don’t want to mention that the f-16 is also from the 1970s and the f-16s Ukraine would get would be likely older models that would have the same constraints as their current aircraft, and that the superiority of the Russians is they use either updated models or different jets. American technology will rule the skies, the Felon is a secretly garbage that can't touch the F-35. - the countless videos I keep getting recommended on YouTube for some reason
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:28 |
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:
that guy is wearing a toupee
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:30 |
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There's no distinction between the government and the "news" media in a bourgeois dictatorship.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:31 |
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adebisi lives posted:I've been keeping tabs on some Wagner social media accounts and you wouldn't believe the depraved stuff they post This sucks. I now support the US sending nukes to Ukraine.
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:32 |
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adebisi lives posted:I've been keeping tabs on some Wagner social media accounts and you wouldn't believe the depraved stuff they post Fascists fighting over the right to use a Disney property as their mascot. Hell yeah, the future owns
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:48 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 12:16 |
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No More Brother Wars Grogu
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# ? Jun 21, 2023 18:52 |