To the point that there is a lot of footage of the people of Iran cheering in the streets.

we’re really doing this propaganda again? can we please get more interesting stuff than the “my people yearn for freedom from this tyrant”?

in totalitarian communist North Korea, the regime disseminates propaganda assuring their brainwashed citizens that being hungry is actually beneficial due to their failed communist agrarian policies

those four oblasts are looking awfully annexed for a “failed annexation”

It does honestly feel like people - on both sides of the war, I will freely admit - put way too much focus on individual events and are unable to see the bigger picture of logistics and equipment produced and so on.

So you end up with, just as a recent example, the Ukrainians going on and on about that Bradley vs tank incident and how “owned” Russia was or whatever (that is managed to keep going for like 5 minutes in constant Bradley fire? sounds like a pretty awesome example of how great Russian tanks are tbh), or that Russian plane full of Ukrainian POWs being shot down by a Patriot, or now this boat being sunk. But none of this actually matters. What’s really going on here is that the pro-Ukraine crowd is seeing these events and drawing absolutely massive conclusions from it. “Aha, see, we can now destroy all Russian tanks with just our infantry carriers! Aha, see, we can now shoot down every Russian plane with our air defense! Aha, see, we can now sink every boat in the Russian fleet!” Russia has thousands of tanks, its planes are routinely not shot down by Ukrainian air defense because of how depleted it is and the Russian countermeasures (flying low, etc), and honestly, sinking the Russian Black Sea fleet would be an L but it would be very far from war-ending, given that Ukraine has no navy for it to fight anyway and Russia obviously has inland missile launchers. But the pro-Russian side like Rybar tends to take these narratives and feels the need to address them because they’re just as caught up in these narratives as everybody else, when they could just ignore them and watch as they’re forgotten in a week.

Wars are determined by systemic issues and, most importantly, the capacity for the warring nations to overcome those issues. Neither side is permanently locked into its state of affairs (in most cases; e.g. WW2 Germany had problems the whole war with getting enough fuel due to simple geography). Not being able to see how a military could make up for its deficiencies is what lead to the Kharkov surprise for the pro-Russian side who didn’t understand that Russia went into the war with too few troops to man parts of the front and that Ukraine had been creating brigades in the rear while their frontline army was getting mauled over the spring and summer, and then the surprise of the failure of the counteroffensive for Ukraine, who didn’t understand that Russia had found a way to counter the Ukrainian offensive strategy and thought that the same trick was guaranteed to work twice.

In short, if you’re going to make an assumption that a military is unable to counter a new problem, you need a LOT of evidence for it - not just vibes about how you think the conflict is going to go. Never assume that a military is stagnant unless you have extremely good reasons to believe so. I personally don’t believe that the Ukrainian military is stagnant and totally doomed and they can still probably keep defending for at least the better part of a year and finding new strategies to counter Russia, but the ongoing lack of Western military reindustrialization is my ‘extremely good reason’ to believe that Ukraine will be unable to win unless there is a very sudden change in the economic strategy of the West away from neoliberalism and just-in-time manufacturing.

It’s the classic argument path:

Liberals: “I hate [foreign government/country/corporation/person/etc] for [usually somewhat justifiable reason in a vacuum]!”

Communists: “Okay, sure, but [Western government/country/corporation/person/etc] does that same thing but much, much worse! Why aren’t you talking about them?”

Liberals: “Oh, I hate it when they do that too! We’re just talking about this particular [foreign government/country/corporation/person/etc] right now! Why are you deflecting? Are you trying to defend them? Whataboutism!”

Communists: go to their profile; literally no evidence that they have ever complained about a single Western entity in their lifetime, and may even have expressed support for Western entities that do even worse things

You can see all these points made in the opposite direction when they talk about US GDP increasing. Many liberal economists have been utterly bamboozled by the concept of “the economy” doing better while public sentiment is very unhappy, but it makes total sense if, completely unlike China, “the economy” improving is actually only synonymous with “capitalists getting richer”. It’s also why we need better measures than GDP if we’re going to do actual economic analysis. These neoclassical economist dipshits would have you believe that doubling your food prices is actually good and a sign of a successful economy because it means that the GDP number goes up.

At this point, I think of the US GDP going up (in lieu of deeper statistics) as a sign that the economy - as in, the actual one that 90% of the population live in - is getting worse, not better.

Yeah. The problem with predicting timeframes is that all these gradual, quantitative changes result in qualitative changes (that is, sudden fractures) which make it difficult to give estimates. The gradual march of NATO’s army eastward in their military offensive against Russia over the last three decades, conquering Eastern Europe as they went, led to the sudden faultline of Ukraine activating. That there might have been an event like this at some point, in some place, between Russia and NATO was perhaps predictable - but the time and place and result was not as predictable. Similarly, in Palestine, that there might have been some existential battle between the Zionists and the Palestinians might have been predicted, but the time and place was not so (regardless of how much Israel copes that they actually saw the attack coming), especially because Hamas didn’t even tell their closest allies they were going to attack in order to preserve the surprise element as much as possible.

In geology, there’s two dueling concepts of uniformitarianism and catastrophism. The first assumes that the natural world around us is formed by gradual, small-scale processes, like the erosion of a beach and the slow construction of a mountain range. The second assumes that instead, short, large and violent events are more important - a meteorite crashing into the Earth, or a supervolcano erupting, or a massive flood. While uniformitarianism pretty handily won the debate overall, it would be folly to say that occasional violent events haven’t been extremely important. The meteorite that ended the dinosaurs fundamentally changed the Earth’s biosphere, and was essentially totally disconnected from the Earth system. Even inside the Earth system, when Lake Agassiz in North America released its massive quantities of water into the ocean about 10,000 years ago, global sea levels rose relatively quickly by up to 10 feet and disrupted oceanic currents and possibly resulted in temporary cooling, with all the knock-on impacts that had on the Earth and humanity.

World events work similarly to geology, though obviously on a much smaller timeframe. The world, its nations and corporations chug on, day to day. Sudden events from both outside and within the system - sometimes predicted in advance - can have massive and fairly unpredictable impacts and lead to major changes. The United States may not have been able to take its position as the quasi-hegemon if not for the World Wars, and while a great European conflict was predictable beforehand, all the effects it would go on to have - the fall of the Russian Empire and the rise of the USSR; massive changes in the Middle East; the eventual end of colonialism; etc - were much, much less predictable. If you were in 1910 and decided to merely plot the gradual effects that you expected capitalism to have on the world and said “Well, according to my model, capitalism will end in 2142 due to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and an inability for imperialists to continue governing the world. It seems that the British Empire’s apex will continue for another few decades and perhaps steadily decline all the way to the 2100s, based on comparisons with the Roman Empire…” then you would be mighty shocked when just 10 years later, Europe was on the brink of a communist revolution.

So, for that reason, I find time estimates rather unhelpful. Like many others, I have talked about how the US probably has a few decades left as an empire - and that might very well be true - but this is assuming a gradual decline without sudden events. If you’d have told me just in 2020 that the US of three years from then would be unable to protect shipping routes through the Red Sea from Yemen despite having two/three aircraft carriers and various other naval assets throughout the region, I would have said that you’re bonkers. If you’d have told me that Russia was almost singlehandedly taking on the combined might of NATO in a proxy war and not only winning, but winning very convincingly, I would have said “There’s no way that they’re actually fighting without nukes dropping, and how could Russia resist NATO anyway, given all their problems?” If you’d have told me pre-October 7th that Israel would very soon be in the worst crisis in its history due to mostly the efforts of Gaza, I would have been like “Well, that’s a nice thought, but we can’t really expect the population of a concentration camp to be able to resist their prison guards to that extent.” God knows what sudden events will happen this year.

Oh, okay, so you think that Israel is bombing Gazans. However, if they wanted to do this, first the bomb would have to fall half the distance to the ground. However, if we treat that as the new starting point, then the bomb then has to fall half the distance to the ground again. Repeat this until infinity and it’s pretty obvious that it would take infinite steps for the bomb to hit the ground, and thus it is impossible for Israel to be bombing Gazans.

it’s literally just protectionist policies by the US that have to be justified by something else for whatever reason

Very true, so long as it begins with the most carbon-emitting people (e.g. western billionaires who own large pollution-emitting corporations) and works its way down

The correctness of an idea is totally independent of how many people believe it, and to believe otherwise is to be some dipshit who says “Idiocracy is a documentary!!!” and invoke Hanlon’s Razor instead of having actual good, materialist analysis of the world

Why doesn’t China annex Mongolia, Korea, and large parts of Southeast Asia? They also have historical claims to those regions, and they can use their resources to further their aims.

I don’t think any country “should” annex any country unless a) it’s necessary to stop atrocities and/or prevent future ones (e.g. the Soviets annexing/taking control/whatever you want to call it Eastern Europe up to Berlin), or b) the people there actually want to be part of the country that is doing the annexing (e.g. Crimea, Donbass). But I can’t personally assign anything other than a moral claim on the word “should”, in the same way that you “should” help a stranger if you have the ability to do so (with various qualifications about your own safety etc). It’s all just authority and violence and military power at the end of the day.

Cuba “should” be able to get Guantánamo Bay back by force - but they obviously cannot, or the US would destroy them. If a large majority of people in the Essequibo want to join Venezuela - keeping in mind that relatively few people actually live there compared to eastern Guyana - then sure, I guess, Venezuela “should” be able to annex it. But unless Maduro is confident about his abilities to withstand US pressure and potential military bombardments, I don’t think it’s a war we have to worry about actually happening.

“Should” countries be able to attack Western-aligned countries? I don’t know, maybe. If China started raining down missiles on Japan tomorrow, or the DPRK attacked South Korea tomorrow, or Cuba attacked Guantánamo Bay tomorrow, or, indeed, if Venezuela attacked Guyana tomorrow, would my reaction be “Oh no! Those poor places being invaded! This is strongly against international law, and we must condemn this attempts at annexation!” It probably wouldn’t, I would support China/DPRK/Cuba/Venezuela, because I don’t give a shit about international law if it benefits imperialists. People who jerk off about how important international law is (like most Western politicians) have the exact same perspective as me but in reverse - they don’t give a shit about it if it benefits countries/areas being exploited (comparing their reactions to Ukraine being invaded and the Gaza Genocide is a good case in point for this). I just don’t pretend to support international law, while those people do pretend to.

One useful thing this conflict has done is reveal who would have absolutely, 100% been fine with Hitler’s policies when living in Nazi Germany. Not even the ongoing extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank - millions of people - is sufficient to snap you out of your election fetishism? Biden is continuing most of Trump’s policies. He’s building Trump’s wall. The suite of laws opposing the LGBTQIA+ community is happening under his presidency. Deportations and child imprisonment at record pace. Abortion rights were lost under his watch. The only reaction you are capable of having to this is “Well, imagine how much worse it would be if Trump was the one doing it!” because this is all a giant game to you. You don’t have to focus on basic survival, on keeping yourself alive and fed for the next month, and thus considering possibilities outside of the finely-curated electoral circus that your eyes were so expertly programmed to consume. If you were actually affected by any of these policies, you wouldn’t be arguing between President Who Will Take My Rights Away #1 and #2, you would be trying to form organizations and survival networks to survive the storm. Any mental or physical effort spent on these elections is wasted energy.

You are the most pliant, brainwashed people in human history. You are completely content to watch every minority around you get fed into the grinder because it’s “lesser evillism”. First they came for the trans people. Then they came for the immigrants. Then they came for the black people. Then they came for me, and as I got on the train on the way to the gigantic human flesh grinding machine, I thought “Well, at least Mango Mussolini isn’t putting me on this train! Boy, if the Republicans were doing this, it would REALLY be fascism!”

Genuine question - how many people would Biden have to kill for you to not support him anymore? A million? Ten million? A hundred million? A billion?

Russia, China, and Iran (the last of which isn’t even on that image) have hypersonic missiles, which effectively mean that aircraft carriers are now pre-sunk artificial coral reefs in a direct conflict with those countries. America does not have hypersonic missiles and keeps failing their prototype tests.

Surprisingly, if healthcare is governed by the profit motive instead of an actual duty of care towards people, then the people in charge of healthcare will focus more on making profits than on providing care.

Never you fear, the disparity between America and Europe will go down. Not because America will improve - god no, it’ll get worse, even - but because the capitalists, backed by fascists, are here to loot European countries and rip the wiring out of the walls as the profitability crisis continues.

they demanded anarchists become MLs if they wanted bullets.

Stalin literally gave them hundreds of tanks

Personally, I think that someone leading insurrections against institutions that have overwhelming popular support due to actively working to give people healthcare, food, etc. is clearly a counterrevolutionary prick and an anarchist who opposes a project that feeds the children for the first time in centuries because it’s not a syndicate is being myopic at best, but that’s just me.

If we were in a hypothetical revolutionary situation led by anarchists that was genuinely and successfully challenging state capitalist power here in the UK then I, as a Marxist-Leninist, wouldn’t be like “Erm, guys, you haven’t sufficiently considered Lenin! Aren’t you aware that the hijacking and reconfiguration of the state for socialist purposes is a necessary transition period towards communism?” I would get behind the fucking barricades with them.

There’s a difference between opposing lesser evilism in the context of Western capitalist electoral politics between two bourgeois parties, and like, being anti-ML or anti-anarchist in actual revolutionary situations (and not stupid fucking hypothetical internet arguments) because “it’s not doing communism right.” Unless there were like, REALLY fucking big problems with what the group is doing, I would just shut up and not weaken the overall movement. As Awoo stated, this is literally what ML groups are doing in Palestine as we speak.

Because arriving at a party when there’s not many people around can be awkward especially if you aren’t already friends with the host. So you wait for more people to arrive first.

I generally like Simplicius but this article sucks. It shows the limits of capital-L Liberal conspiracybrain, suggesting that everything the world over is connected and there are no real surprise events.

The part about Pearl Harbour at the beginning is actually quite illustrative of one of the big flaws of conspiratorial thinking like this, which is the “Everything Is A Hidden Message And You’re A Smartypants If You Figure It Out” thing. For example, he says:

There are many circulating accounts of all the things that seem “off” about Hamas’ attack, so I won’t recount every single point here as most of you have likely read them in multiple places; things like the very implausible breach of Israel’s high tech gates and defenses, to the unprecedented failures of Mossad and Shin Bet, to Netanyahu’s eerily scripted invocation of ‘Pearl Harbor’, which is very telling considering that Pearl Harbor was also a falseflag attack with the purpose of bringing the U.S. into WW2.

(did I miss something about Pearl Harbour being a false flag? is that a thing? I admit my WW2 historical knowledge isn’t that great as I like other time periods better. regardless:)

The implication here is “Netanyahu used the words ‘Pearl Harbour’, which isn’t a coincidence! He was actually referring to how Pearl Harbor was a false flag, and therefore so is this attack! Aha! I am a 200 IQ very smart person for figuring out this hidden sign!” which is just bonkers; why would Netanyahu covertly spill his plan out to the world? What benefit would that give him? It’s much more likely that he just reached for the biggest, most shocking event he and his scriptwriters could think of.

To Simplicius’ credit, he does talk about how you could conceivably imagine either the US/Israel or Russia/Iran/China coming up with this masterplan, with it either benefiting US world hegemony or destroying it, depending on what facts you look at and consider compelling. I don’t think either narrative is convincing. If the West had planned it in advance, then they would have known that it would have ruined the Saudi normalization deal. Simplicius says that that could be the point because normalization < neverending chaos in the region, but frankly I think there’s much more in it for the West to have everybody on their side as much as possible. If Iran had planned it in advance, my understanding is that Iran’s government is fairly compromised - I don’t know to what degree, but stuff seems to spill out one way or another (and, to be fair, Israel’s government may also be fairly compromised if rumours are true). Such plans to do this uprising would have been leaked in advance.

Israel created Hamas!