The run up to the start of the war in Iraq. Anyone who was paying attention knew that Afghanistan was already a disaster, a complete failure for everyone but arms dealers, and everyone also knew that the gwb regime was completely full of shit. Massive rallies worldwide saying no, yet they did it anyway. Fucking murderous assholes.
The Jewish Voice for Labour, founded to represent Jews who supported Corbyn, have pointed out that in the new Labour Party under Starmer, Jewish members are 13 times more likely to be expelled for supporting left-wing groups than non-Jewish members, and Jewish members are six times more likely to come under investigation for antisemitism than non-Jews.
Fuuuuuuuuucccckkk you starmer that stupid fuck. I don’t have time to retrieve the letter to some western journalist Stalin wrote about antisemitism v anticapitalism in the early 30s but it is extremely relevant here
The counterpoint to him being a wildcard is that during his administration, the US stayed the course as far as meddling in ukraine/not pushing for implementation of the minsk accords.
“In essence, there cannot be and never have been any changes in Washington’s foreign policy. Therefore, I would not pin any hopes on the elections in America,” he said.
Rofl what a line
As the Ukrainians are finding, offense is much harder than defense. Ukraine’s offensive has hit a brick wall but don’t mistake that for a complete military collapse that would allow Russia to sweep them next year. Troops require much less training to be effective defenders than attackers. The US still has (marginally?) better ISR than Russia in terms of satellite imagery and so the big arrow maneuvers that would be required to say sweep the remaining annexed oblasts let alone getting to the dnieper would be very tough for Russia. Smart use of ATACMS by ukraine to hit troop/equipment buildup would also slow any offensive, though that’s a lot less true if ukraine keeps throwing them at the kerch bridge or whatever targets in Crimea.
I suspect that 2024 will see continued careful Russian advances while ukraine is on the back foot. Trump’s campaign will (rightfully) be buoyed by Biden’s abject failure in this area. If the GOP actually wins, liberal pundits will claim anything that happens subsequently in ukraine to be occuring according to some devious master plan of the Trumputin kroenenberg monster they imagine. If there is any negotiated settlement in a trump term I doubt it will happen until 2026 or more because President Deals will get distracted by whatever the domestic issue du jour is. Meanwhile, the security state will do what it does and continue making money hand over fist. I don’t think this dynamic changes without wholesale turnover of the zelensky regime and legitimization of an alternative. However, I suspect that any alternative that is not installed by Russia will be even more rabidly nationalist and not enthusiastic for peace.
If you kick one person out of the party, they are alone on the street. If you kick half the people out of the party, they start having fun outside.
Yeah I don’t think there will be referendums in the four oblasts again. They already did them, however comical it is to have a wartime referendum on half a territory.
I am very skeptical of the west ever officially accepting territorial changes, at least not until it has been defacto accepted for 20+ years.
This headline clearly shows how the worm has turned for media attitudes towards ukraine
https://archive.ph/YATEz - Ukraine’s counteroffensive is stalling. The West must prepare for humiliation
The article is not worth reading to learn about the war but could be worth if interested in changing sentiment
This article is actually worth reading, a bunch of history of Crimea, various referendums (referenda?) over the past 30 years. The quote below is referencing some other author Graeme
https://socialistincanada.ca/revisiting-crimeas-2014-decision-to-join-the-russian-federation/
Graeme Gill closes his informative essay on an unfortunate note. He writes, “Final resolution of the Crimea question must rest with some form of popular plebiscite directly run and overseen by an international body…” This begs two questions: how many times must the Crimean people vote before the world recognizes that Crimean viewpoints and decisions do, indeed, matter; and which international body has the authority and credibility to conduct such another vote?
Gill must surely be aware of the long history of Western imperialist countries and the ‘international bodies’ they control or dominate sabotaging democratic votes and going so far as to assassinate those who win.
August pmi stats by country - https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/manufacturing-pmi
Who’s at the bottom and who’s at the top? Who’s sanctioning who? I wonder if the poles still think “thank you, USA” after they see themselves just a few rungs above germany
“The advantage the Chinese have is they are willing to throw people at collection in large numbers,” she said. “If a few of them get caught, it will be very difficult for the U.S. government to prove anything beyond trespassing, and those who don’t get caught are likely to collect something useful.”
Sending wave after wave of tourists at front gates across the country, zapp branigan style.
“they say the Chinese are so numerous that their tourists blot out the sun”
“then we shall do gate checks in the shade!”
Ah, but you see 
Strip away all the rationalization and it’s literally that simple
Not a news post, but hear me out.
I read the first half dozen or so chapters of don Quixote this week. It’s a story of an anachronistic errant knight stuck in the death throes of feudalism (read, an idle failson) that goes out and does self-indulgent chivalry to the common folk of the region. It’s all told in the unreliable voice of Don Quixote as he fucks around out of touch, imagining he is doing Great Deeds. He is self effacing to himself and wildly arrogant to others.
I’m not sure I will read it all (it’s 1000 pages) but it reminds me a lot of Confederacy of dunces by Toole and A Rebours by Hyusmans, both also stories of self important basement dwellers going out into society. Both of these books are in my opinion more readable to the modern audience (especially CoD as it was only written in the 70s, while a rebours was 1880s I think) but Don Quixote is nevertheless notable to me for depicting a very similar Type of Guy. All three protagonists remind me of precursors to the idiot social conservative authors that chapo makes fun of so well.
I think that if you can make the mental effort to accept the anachronistic writing style, other newsbrains here might enjoy checking out Don Quixote.
This game exclusively feels like you’re in a firefight with an HR department.
nice one comrade rofl
From one of wapo’s cope and seethe opeds that is not worth linking (mentioned on a nakedcapitalism article this week) :
Many observers believe that the Russians are determined to stay the course until the 2024 elections in the hope that Donald Trump would be elected and that he would quickly hang the Ukrainians out to dry as he searched for a deal with Vladimir Putin. That would be a disaster, legitimizing naked aggression and emboldening dictators such as Putin and China’s Xi Jinping who want to disregard norms and rewrite the rules of the international system. “The jungle,” as Robert Kagan calls it, would return to international life.
this kind of insane historical revisionism and western chauvinism bullshit is so infuriating. As if the last 50 years of American naked aggression and the boldness of the NATO industrial complex have never happened.
There is no new observation here but this kind of story just really makes me think a lot about minecraft
Good thinking. Chile is an interesting country. I’ll try to put something together about its resource industry next week.
The NAFO people and ukrainian nationalists don’t have a rationale for why ukraine is not being supplied with everything all at once. In fact, they’re mad as heckin’ puppers that other countries aren’t giving them more stuff even faster.
It’s easier to be right wing in the west because there are billions and billions of dollars sloshing around shaping the base and superstructure. Being left wing means pushing against that. It’s swimming upstream