Eugene V Debs, a communist that ran for US president from his prison cell, securing 3.4% of the vote. Also the former state representative of Indiana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs

Yes it fucking was a colony. Calling somewhere “independent” and puppeting it while maintaining all colonial extractions is not freedom from colonialism.

You only learned the country’s name this week, and your entire understanding of this topic is from wikipedia. I am very much willing to give them, Burkina Faso and Mali an opportunity to be better, or not. At which point I will adjust my opinion.

Nigerian

At least get the name of the fucking country right. You’re naming the wrong ass country.

Every single african nation that today is no longer a colony achieved so through either a coup or revolutionary regime. What exactly are you expecting people to do? Vote colonialism out? How childish.

Eugene V Debs. The best president the US never had.

o7

You either have to believe the new state is becoming a colony of Russia(it obviously isn’t), or accept that its improved from the colonial arrangement and that’s what makes it attractive to make deals with Russia.

Russia gets plenty out of it without doing anything colonial. The export deals France had were basically stripping the country of all of its wealth, Uranium and Gold in particular, which Niger are nationalising.

Russia will certainly get some beneficial deals out of their help offered but don’t have to make themselves as bad as France to come out on top of this, and in fact simply the act of weakening France and by extension the rest of the western bloc is a win for them by itself. I don’t see Russia as anywhere near as good as the Soviets were but the Soviet strategy was basically “liberate african countries entirely in order to weaken the west who are the colonial holders of these countries”. The history of soviet liberation of africa is also the primary reason many in africa still hold a lot of positivity to Russia, even though the two are not remotely comparable.

Watching France lose control of its remaining colonial holdings while the French population simultaneously cause chaos at home is a pleasure I did not expect to get until at least 2030.

Mate I don’t know why you’ve said half this shit. I talked about none of that. It’s like you’re talking at me rather than with me. US weapons? Who said anything about america? It’s like you’re reading off a script instead of actually responding to what I’ve said. I’m glad that you’re really excited to see loads of people die but like, actually talk to me instead of soapboxing.

This boundless optimism is so strange. Using something that was so long ago now for propaganda in the present is super misleading. Until we see a breakthrough of the defensive lines, literally just 1 layer of a line would be a good start let alone all 3 layers I can’t really agree with anyone that thinks much is going to happen from the ukrainian side. If/when that does happen I’d be happy to reassess.

This would be a useful additional feature, I think the shock value of the method I’m suggesting would have potential to interest at least some press outlets (probably not the major ones who would recognise it as damaging to the people they represent though). You need some novelty in this kind of thing to get it to spread.

That’s kinda the point. Being able to see just how few people own literally everything and thus are influencing opinion through means that people currently completely overlook is powerful. Advertising is literally propaganda. Consumer culture is propaganda. When you cut through that and make people conscious of it on a constant minute to minute basis you will see rapid radicalisation occur. Our society relies on a system of carefully designed barriers that create separation between the people and the ruling class in a way that is unnoticeable to the average person without prompting.

Think of it like pulling back the curtain in the wizard of oz for people.

I’ve always believed it would be useful to have a thing like this but for brand logos.

But instead of blurring or blocking the brand logo like an adblocker what it does instead is show you the face of the top shareholder in that brand. Remove the brands and show the assholes that own them. Where it’s not a single person you replace that brand with the name of the hedgefund or bank that owns the investment.

It would bring people’s attention away from brand consumerism and to a constant consciousness of the ruling class looming over them in everything.

This uhh. This is just nonsense right? I’m not aware of Ukraine having broken any of the defensive first lines let alone past any of the dragon’s teeth lines. There’s 2 more lines beyond those. Getting past these lines is necessary before getting even 10%, let alone 50%.

Or are they talking about something that happened much earlier? That’s really confusing too because anyone that’s been watching the map trackers knows nothing close to 50% ever happened. Certainly some pushback several months ago but hardly 50% ???

In this thread: Shit loads of people who will say they care about the climate crisis on one day, then say they don’t care about the 18.5% of global carbon emissions that the meat industry causes the next day because they can’t get over the decade worth of anti-veganism jokes and memes that they’ve constantly repeated uncritically.

Individual habits MUST be changed to solve this part of the problem, there is literally no way around that. Getting triggered and writing screeds because you’ve spent decades getting caught up in hate over food choices won’t stop the planet burning.

Nah. Let the rich morons off themselves.

I am calling for even fewer regulations. Negative regulations.

Yes. I could not give a shit about “territorial integrity”. This is nationalism. I’m not a nationalist, I don’t like states especially bourgeoise states.

You are putting nationalism ahead of people’s lives.

That’s for the Ukrainians to decide

No it isn’t. It’s for the Ukrainian rulers to decide. The people don’t get any choice in it, that’s the problem. And everyone that opposed this war was rounded up and arrested, every left wing party in the country was shut down, and the left wing tv channels were also shut down, all under the “they’re pro russia” excuse simply for being against the war. There is no “let the ukrainians decide” under that environment.

There is an easy way to end the war: Russian withdrawal. It really is as simple as that.

Not physically possible under russian law.

While we all want the war to stop, it cannot be done at any price. Ukraine must be allowed to return the areas stolen from it and Russia must return to pre 2014 borders. Either they do it willingly or with force. No one likes it, but it’s Russia that chose to attack, not Ukraine.

Again, this is not possible under Russian law. The notion that it’ll be done with force is similarly unrealistic, nukes would fly before these were taken by force. But before that happens you’d have to see the removal of the Russian warships off the coast which will be obliterating anything that comes near Crimea. It just isn’t ever happening without a navy or an airforce.

I hope your friends are safe, but at the same time I hope they have the sense to leave Crimea until things settle.

They’re fine for now. It’s relatively quiet there because the defensive line is so far away, barring these bridge incidents.

And let’s hope for peace, but recognize that it cannot be achieved by giving into the offender’s demands.

We’d be there already if not for boris fucking johnson. I really don’t know why you care about the “offender’s demands” either. Are you a nationalist? People are what matter. I could not give a shit about what flag exists between the two, right now it’s just a situation where two extremely shit sides throw thousands of lives into a meatgrinder and all I want to see is the meatgrinder stop.

I uhh. Don’t share your optimism or actually care who runs it, I only really care that the people I know there remain safe. For them and for myself the flag be waved around is somewhat meaningless compared to the human impact of all this nonsense, particularly because some of my socialist friends are gone now. With that said I don’t see Crimea changing hands again, nor does anyone I have spoken to currently in Crimea. I might change that assessment if the counteroffensive ever actually sees the first line of dragon’s teeth but so far it’s been completely underwhelming. Everyone also sees the deployment of clusterbombs as a “let’s salt the earth so it’s worthless to them” move rather than anything that will change the counteroffensive’s prospects.

I’m not saying it wasn’t Ukrainian territory. I’m saying that the presence there was 100% russian military because it was functionally operated as their military port.

This is precisely why there was no battle over it, no deaths, no nothing. Just “this is russia now” and continued operation of it as they always had but with different flags.

What other lens should we look at the annexation through? It was clearly the early stages of this war.

I’d much prefer a non-war lens of the place and how cool it is. Most people in america hadn’t even heard of it until the annexation, it’s very unfortunate.

I don’t think calling it the early stages of this war is quite accurate but it’s not really that important and kinda gets into unnecessary semantics. The war probably wouldn’t be happening if the Minsk agreement had been kept. Russia were never going to let Crimea go because they needed it as a military port but they avoided Donetsk and Luhansk up until the Minsk agreement failed. If they had taken these regions in 2014 it would have been a breeze for them as Ukraine had no military to speak of, which is why the civil war was fought by the nazi volunteer batallions (azov, right sector, etc etc). Ukraine’s military was ramped up between 2014 and 2021. They did not really have much of anything until the 2016 Stategic Defense Bulletin followed by the State Program for the Development of the Armed Forces (2017-2020). In 2014 the military was only 90k active personnel with over half being civilian staff.

The denial of reality going on here is absurd. Pre 2014 I know they operated the checkpoints because I went to Crimea for 2 weeks in 2009. I’m not saying that there wasn’t also fuckery involved but denying the reality of events is nonsensical. There is even a vice documentary that shows just how casual the transition was. It’s extremely painful discussing these topics with people online whose only understanding of these regions comes through the lens of this war.

Crimea wasn’t “invaded”. Russia was already there as it leased the port and officially managed it for military use already. That’s why there was no fighting. They already ran the checkpoints, they already were the entire military presence in the region. The changeover from “this is Ukraine” to “this is Russia now” was entirely the signing of papers and changed absolutely nothing about the presence in the region or the average day to day. They certainly took it over, but to say it was invaded is somewhat misleading, more of a “we’ve decided that this is ours now”.