Max

Conscription is a questionable gambit considering recent austerity movements—if euro’s bourgeoisie arm their unwilling working class with military weapons and teach them to fight, they can’t also put the screws to them at home. Well, not without inciting revolution anyway.

I still can’t tell if the Trump admin have any positive policy positions (that is actually wanting something) as opposed to their negative policy position of undoing ‘liberal policy’ without any consideration of the consequences because lib policy is inherently harmful and any apparent benefit is actually just harm the Trump folks don’t know how to describe yet.

Bush’s war on terror was the attempt to convert Cold War soft power intro a traditional hard power empire and it was a complete catastrophe. That’s why all the former Bush guys, Bolton and his allies., were so intent on preventing Trump from doing this. Obama and co made it their mission to intensify soft power because that’s the best way to meet americas goals. I’m not convinced this isn’t just reactionaries undoing everything the non-white president did. There certainly isn’t a thoughtful reason to be doing this. Moving towards hard power is simply an objectively wrong move and this is doubly true from the perspective of an American populace that has no interest in joining the military let alone fighting and dying.

So it’s an ideological consideration certainly, combined with Elon having some issues with both agencies negatively impacting his businesses—for example, payments received by Elon’s starlink company were being investigated by USAID.

Blaming the proxy when it doesn’t work out, and claiming the issue is cost is just cope to make NATO countries feel confident it’s the dum dum Slavs fault and not the reality that NATO has little to no tech or strategic advantage over anyone who is actually a rival military. NATO doctrine during the ‘war on terror’ involved using as many munitions as possible in “shock and awe” attacks but maybe NATO wasn’t willing to extend the use of that tactic to a lowly proxy. Or maybe NATO doctrine only applies to farmers with 1950s weaponry defending their homes

I think folks can lose sight of this. The US is not and has never been a democracy. And even insofar as the sham elections go, as the AP byline shows again, both relevant parties have essentially identical foreign policy. Even now, Trump and co just appear incapable of getting the job done—it’s not as though they want America’s imperial grasp to weaken.

I’m inclined to agree. This seems like the first time (at least in my memory) where no one with significant influence in US gov’t fundamentally understands what has been US foreign policy since Monroe. All the idiot business guys who think the US sends money to forcibly underdeveloped countries out of the kindness of their hearts—folks simply intellectually unequipped to continue the post-Soviet international order—are the only ones at the reigns. On top of that, they got some weirdo Canadian-South African billionaire with no understanding of US consumer culture (and the US citizens’ complete aversion to any inconvenience) to come impose harsh anarcho-capitalist austerity measures at home. “There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen” seems especially apt right now.

I certainly don’t see any value in volunteering my time or resources to the cause. As far as I can tell as a midwestern transplant to the Bay Area, the differences between CA identity and the rest of the US is wildly overstated by dum dum politicians trying to score cheap points with their constituents in the red Midwest and deep south.

The only reason I could see CA becoming some kind of US territory is that for whatever reason, the kind of people outside CA who would be the happiest to see CA no longer being as large an influence in US politics just refuse to acknowledge that CA is the primary US economic engine.

I don’t think there is an expectation of canceling water deals due to a calexit. Calexit folks aren’t planning on incurring further US hostilities since so much of the country already has a unique disdain for CA. They are anticipating a “fine good riddance enjoy your liberal hellhole you socialists” style reaction from enough of the country to avoid any intense sanctioning or violence with the rest of the US. No one with any pull is advocating taking up arms or anything wild like that. They liken the effort to being a constituent country as is Scotland in the UK. More independent than a US-style state less independent than a separate sovereign state like are the US and Canada. I haven’t any idea if they ought to be worried about water deals, I just think that’s the organization’s line so to speak.

Trump seems to like Starmer personally so none of what was said by the admin previously matters anymore. That said Trump having another about-face on Starmer could be mere moments away at any time so who knows what will really happen in the end.

Your response isn’t contradicting the book’s conclusions. Not sure if you meant that or if I’m misinterpreting your wording but the author is arguing against cartels as depicted in fiction and the media: that cartels are orgs that exist independently of the state and challenge state power. You’re eloquently arguing part of why that understanding is incorrect.

Cartels as understood by most folks is a myth

Not sure what that guy has in mind though.

https://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/9780826504661/drug-cartels-do-not-exist/

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Let’s not get too carried away. Israel isn’t ending the genocide, they are pausing the most explicitly violent killings to go back to more subtle forms of killing until they decide to launch more military ops on civilians again. With Miriam Adelson being in Trumps ear as well as largely responsible for his campaign funding I cannot imagine he does anything that isn’t explicitly intended to further Israeli goals. The new ambassador to Israel is a guy who thinks ‘the Jews’ need to control Israel for the Christian apocalypse to begin. I can’t see how that will be an improvement for the Palestinians.

Fidel developing a proto-Eurostep adds a lot to his mystique.

Agreed. Based on what his ex-girlfriend said about him, it sounds like his brain had turned to jelly after repeated head trauma that he had lied about to avoid being flagged with medical issues. I think the guy is just spouting off typical America-brained nonsense but thrown into the blender of late-stage CTE.

Marcuse is helpful here. The idea that average people in the US are actively considering how to uphold the imperial global order is preposterous. It’s more insidious. I don’t have One Dimensional Man in front of me so here are some paraphrases from the wiki article. As a disclaimer, the parts of 1D man on the USSR are based on analysis of common largely unsubstantiated western assumptions according to a former soviet psychologist I’ve spoken to about it. As they said, the USSR wasn’t maintained so it clearly had some internal concerns with getting people to accept the socialist mission, but that Marcuse’s concepts aren’t especially prescient factors in that situation, anyway:

“Modern industrial societies have furthermore created an “affluent society”, which in increasing comfort have disguised the exploitative nature of the system, and have therefore strengthened means of domination and control. Modern “affluent society” therefore limits opportunities for political revolution against capitalism.

Marcuse contends that in contemporary consumer societies, a select few wield the power to shape our conceptions of freedom by offering us the means to purchase our own happiness. In this state of “unfreedom”, consumers act irrationally by working more than they are required to in order to fulfill actual basic needs, by ignoring the psychologically destructive effects, by ignoring the waste and environmental damage it causes, and by searching for social connection through material items.

It is even more irrational in the sense that the creation of new products, calling for the disposal of old products, fuels the economy and encourages the need to work more to buy more. An individual loses his humanity and becomes a tool in the industrial machine and a cog in the consumer machine. Additionally, advertising sustains consumerism, which disintegrates societal demeanor, delivered in bulk and informing the masses that happiness can be bought, an idea that is psychologically damaging.”

I think we are mainly discussing intentionality and semantics.

Joe Cracker has no ‘good’ reason for supporting the imperial mission abroad but he does because of media influence, latent nationalism, etc.

I feel like this is probably anti-Chinese propaganda without any meaningful info contained. The Chinese govt setting up satellite companies to lure confused western engineers seems to align with classic conspiracy theories. Otherwise this is saying giant global firm Huawei will hire westerners which isn’t especially surprising considering their attempts to enter western markets.

Everyone thinks they know better and investor money has to go somewhere for taxation purposes.

As an aside, S&P500 index is the only investment worth making for USAmericans who aren’t in congress.

This is a LEGO advertisement, just so everyone is aware. I can’t find info on how the polling worked so it’s unclear how the job options were chosen. But, it doesn’t seem like the kids were allowed to input their own answers—rather there was a list of jobs and respondents were told to pick 3.

There are plenty of reasons to object to the US/UK education systems so we dont need to rely on something intended to sell LEGO model rockets. Not to mention, being pessimistic is a choice and begets inaction. We can’t fall victim to nihilism lest we become nothing but annoying gadfly social critics, talking about how obviously right we are as the world ends to climate change and open combat between multinational corporations.

Anyway, this advert is pretty clever. Creating a leading poll to convince parents they need to buy their kids legos to prevent the Chinese from taking over space managed to get them all sorts of free media coverage—not to mention random shares from people like us.

The imperialist (ie late colonialist) relationship at the very least substantially defines the current capitalist system. It doesn’t seem possible for the conditions that exist now to arise any other way.

As far as whether or not capitalism in any form would ever develop in a world without colonialism, it’s hard for me to say considering my limited knowledge. A couple things to consider though:

Profit for business, ie extraction of additional value over competing firms, is essentially only decided by labor cost—materials and technology end up costing everyone about the same at scale. Labor exploitation would be obvious in a society that cannot use imperialism to export economic burdens and obfuscate social relationships. This clear opposition between worker and capitalist could prevent capitalism from arising or maybe only lead to a capitalism similar to ours but with a significantly shorter lifespan.

I’m majorly spitballing and hopefully someone more knowledgeable about early capitalist history/development will share their perspective.

Maybe send an email then. Uploading any personal content to a public server has always been frowned upon at places I’ve worked so it’s not crazy to contact the guy—especially if your job is in anyway related to network security or other IT type work.