I wonder really, what they need that kinds of statistics. Of course the utter hypocrisy is that they also ask for the whole social security number in the same application, which actually tells the sex of the person (at birth, at least) quite clearly, if you just know how to read the numbers. So guess the statistics they want to know is about how many don't think the sex at birth doesn't represent them, have had a sex change or something. — ssu

Imagine getting your panties in this much of a bunch because you are given more choices which, ultimately, don't even affect you one iota.

People like to talk about "wokeness" as a result of snowflakesness or some such, but it's pretty clear wokeness is what brings out pathetic, fragile egos like the above in spades as a reaction. This is probably the best argument for wokeness: it brings out to the fore those pathetic enough to care this much. You get to identify society's weakest, most contemptable beings.

Damn! A longshot, but worth a try.

Your handwriting?

@Banno - From a 2nd hand bookstore in country NSW!

No one. Call it a paraphrase.

"The US is not involved in what is obvious to anyone with half a brain as the clearest-cut proxy war between Russia and the US in modern memory, one that it helped engineer and provoke".

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/04/russian-invasion-ukraine-us-sanctions-inflation-global-economy

Turns out that most countries in the global south - whose opinions actually matter - have more sense then NATO bootlickers who like to frequent this thread, which is unsurprising but fun to be reminded of:

I think that most countries in the Global South have condemned Russia’s invasion but have been very hesitant to go beyond that, at this point, and be dragged into a US-NATO-led bloc. I think this is a recognition of three things. One is that it was partly NATO’s expansion right up to the borders of Russia that created the conditions for Putin’s countermove. This push to get countries on the border with Russia into NATO has been going on since 1994.

The West, and in particular the United States, has been involved in regime change in Ukraine, especially with the Maidan uprising in 2014, very much linked to fascist groups. And now this is being used by the United States for a real drive to regain its primacy as the global hegemon, seeking to rescue its tattered reputation after its defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was also a NATO defeat.

...Yes, I think [Western double-standards] is one of the reasons why Global South countries are keeping a distance from the US efforts to drag them onto Washington’s side. Definitely the double standards in relation to Ukraine versus the Iraq War, the civil war in Syria, the Palestine-Israeli long war, and the Saudi genocidal war in Yemen, that is all very clear in the Global South and there is an awareness of the real historical record. We won’t be duped.

This is why trying to create a unified anti-Russian alliance isn’t going to work. Everyone knows there are clear double standards and the United States is really using the Ukrainian crisis to reassert its hegemony. I think Washington was hoping that somehow it would be able to reconstruct the past and create amnesia about what happened in the Middle East with its wars there, but that hasn’t worked.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/18/turkey-launches-new-offensive-against-kurdish-rebels-in-iraq

Oh look NATO member Turkey is bombing and murdering Kurds in Iraq. Can't wait for Westerners to start caring about Iraqi Kurds and demanding that we send weapons to them to stave off the evil Turks.

Yeah, which is why you consistently work so hard to minimize attention and apologize for the worst abuser of all three on the planet.

Lol imagine thinking the US even gives an iota of a shit about 'human rights, free press, and fair elections'. Jfc you post literal propaganda and expect to the taken seriously.

Duh it's not like keeping Russia down has been one of the top three foreign policy objectives of the US ever since the fall of the Berlin wall as amply documented by every other FP document on the topic worth reading. Just crazzzzzy circumstance, and of course, if you raise these issues, you're basically just doing what anti-semites do while sleeping with a Putin body pillow.

This must be thrown out, but capitalism in principle is essential for such a densely populated planet to live in any semblance of peace and prosperity. — Punshhh

I vehemently disagree, but this is not the place to hash that out. I will say though, that until you recognize capitalism as the problem, you will be only ever be left with non-solutions like 'rebuilding the manufacturing base', whose calls simply end up an ever more murderous pitching of nations against nations, workers against workers, such that you get a suicidal bellum omnium contra omnes - a war of all against all. Which is exactly the cloth that this current conflict in Ukraine is cut out of.

It's really amazing how there's this practially spontaneous regurgitation of the American interest of obsuring it's obscene power in the world, covered over by mythical plucky Ukranians just fighting the good fight.

I hope they are right. — Manuel

Well they are bombing Gaza again.

https://twitter.com/richimedhurst/status/1516187116790849540?t=soDqzt6BP2ZjQoGyl6D2Qw&s=19

Can't wait till the virtuous West starts singing songs about the "violation of sovereignty" while changing their little flags to Palentinian ones in solidary against an racist, violent ethnostate.

Agreed. But considering that the IMF has an interest in jacking up projections such as these so as to justify the devestation they inflict upon economies, either it's refreshingly honest to see such dire projections, or worse, optimistic on the part of the IMF.

Why? Colonial wars have been fought now for hundreds of years. — ssu

Yes but the US does not (directly) colonize. Except for that one time in the Phillipines maybe.

What do you mean about logistics? — ssu

https://gprivate.com/5ywvn

Edit: Also, you think US society is 'seperated from war????' They have a militaristic culture that belies caricature. They're their own living parody of a nation that cannot shut the fuck up about war and the military, even when going shopping. They prey on (poor) high school students to be cannon fodder for Gods sake. Never seen a society with so pathological a relationship with murdering people overseas, regulalry.

I think the reason is that whole society has been separated from being at war — ssu

*yawn* more psychology babble. More likely because fighting wars across the other side of the planet does not work very well as a logistics excercise.

And besides there is alot less profit to be made in winning than just perpetual, low to medium level conflict.

Kindergarden for you it is, I guess.

Or then look at the marvelous surrender peace deal that US President Trump did leaving out your government in the cold? — ssu

To be fair, since WWII the US has more or less given up on winning wars. Their modus operandi is to go in, absolutely ruin a place, then withdraw while leaving said place in total ruin. By that track record, Ukraine knows very well what to look forward to.

Ah, time to massacre a bunch of Palestianian children in response, no doubt.

Will to fight is important. It isn't the only thing of course, but it isn't some myth. — ssu

Ok buddy, if it means so much to you, you can have your 'will'. Meanwhile I imagine most people who are not in kindergarden will probably lean a bit more into the material support of almost the entire Anglo-continental world as a preponderant factor of Ukranian action. But sure, you can have some 'will' as a treat.

--

Liberal brain-rot is insane. These people have been told their whole lives that they are the heroes of their own stories so they have to make metaphysical nonsense up and impute it to an entire geo-strategic war in order to shore up the liberal sense of individual agency. This is what watching too much Hollywood does to you. You start to analyze a fucking war as a matter of 'will'.

This is because most weapons do not yet fire themselves, thanks be to God. — unenlightened

Assuming, of course, they have weapons to fire.

That's OK, it's pretty common for people to psychologize and metaphysicalize world politics. It's the lowest hanging fruit which requires no actual material analysis of anything whatsoever. Just a bunch of just-so stories about personal qualities, as if fighting a war is a matter of shaping up a nation's CV. "Has good leadership potential. Lots of will. Very eager to defeat Russians".

So if you don't think the will to fight is metaphysical bullshit, you are simply wrong. — ssu

Wanna read what you just typed here again?

The government of Afghanistan got far more military aid from the US than Ukraine. — ssu

Oh right, because the only difference between Afghanistan and Ukraine was US military aid. The only other difference must be 'the will'. Fuck me I didn't think I was speaking to people who believe in actual voodoo.

Amazing how quickly people will aver to literal metaphysical bullshit like 'the will', rather than say, the material support of the world's most brutally armed empire.

It’s time for the West to rebuild its manufacturing, industrial and social base. And wean itself of China’s succour. — Punshhh

This will never happen and it is not in the interest of the West, so long as it remains capitalist, to do so. The West elected to "dump" its factories in China so it could save on labour costs and evade regulation. It will continue to elect to do so until conditions in the West begin to match that of China. Which, to be fair, is not inconceivable, considering the rapid deterioration of the condition of the working class in the West, as cheerled by its elites. Do not blame China for what Western business and political leaders rushed headlong into with glee.

The idea of 'rebuilding the manufacturing base' is nothing but Trumpian nationalism meant to hide the fact that the destruction of the manufacturing base has in every case enriched powers in the West, and been carried out deliberately by Western power holders, who then turn up the nationalism dial in order to deflact blame from themselves. What the West requires - along with the rest of the world - is the bloody destruction of capitalism and the advent of a new economic and social order. It could learn a thing or two from the way in which China has gagged it's billionare class.

Anyone who didn't think from the get-go that this was always about China in the long run has not been paying attention.

But give the examples then. — ssu

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/04/ukraine-russia-putin-azov-neo-nazis-western-media

--

Anyway, I will refrain from making this a thread about Ukraine. Just wanted to comment on Israel arming Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Much like their sponsors, the US.

Ah right, because the Russians said something it can't be true. And what was that about 'not condemning things' because you don't like the source? At least I can unequivocally call the Russian attack murderous and unjustified. You on the other hand will literally spread Nazi PR for them by pretending they don't exist.

Also very cute how your response to an article is "no it's a lie" based on... what, your charisma?

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-111-what-about-greece-charting?r=1ybx2&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

This is what awaits Sri Lanka under the patronage of the IMF, if the experience of Greece is anything to go by:



Basically by 2035 or so it should be back to where it was in... 2009. Only the state has been gutted and fiscally Greece is basically an vassal state of Brussels with zero democratic input. Yay for structural adjustment.

Anyway, hey look, Israel gives weapons to neo-Nazis - the same neo-Nazi's @ssu likes to pretend don't exist:

https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-arming-neo-nazis-ukraine/24876

Azov Battalion online propaganda shows Israeli-licensed Tavor rifles in the fascist group’s hands, while Israeli human rights activists have protested arms sales to Ukraine on the basis that weapons might end up with anti-Semitic militias. In a letter “about licenses for Ukraine” obtained by The Electronic Intifada, the Israeli defense ministry’s arms export agency says they are “careful to grant licenses” to arms exporters “in full coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government entities.”

The 26 June letter was sent in reply to Israeli lawyer Eitay Mack who had written a detailed request demanding Israel end all military aid to the country. Azov’s official status in the Ukrainian armed forces means it cannot be verified that “Israeli weapons and training” are not being used “by anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi soldiers,” Mack and 35 other human rights activists wrote. They had written that Ukrainian armed forces use rifles made in Israel “and are trained by Israelis,” according to reports in the country. The head of the Israeli arms export agency declined to deny the reports, or to even discuss cancellation of the weapons licenses, citing “security” concerns.

It's the issue of not having the US to be seen as this White Knight in the Ukraine crisis — ssu

These are certainly a grammatical string of words. It would be good if they had any meaning whatsoever.

anything the US condemns they cannot similarly be condemned as it gives credibility to the US. — ssu

I have no idea what you're referring to here. Probably because you like to make shit up, on the off chance you're not spouting casually racist canards.

Or the casual beatings of fathers in front of their children, apropos nothing in general other than being a bunch of fucking animals:

Just a causal bit of drive-by beating of women for some funsies.

Undoubtedly learning from American cops how to treat people.

What does a stupid intervention started by MBS suit me? — ssu

Beats me. You're the one who seem to volunteer yourself as the target of my critique despite me not mentioning you at all. Guily conscience maybe? Or maybe just another opportunity for you to white knight for American interests?

Yes yes, you, like every other liberal shill pays lip service to things when it suits you.

Yeah that must be it. Just novelty. Nothing to do with the fact that people like you simply parrot US talking points as and when they come out.

Yes. 17 or 20 people were hurt in the clashes with the police. — ssu

They were not 'clashes with police'. They were dehumanizing raids conducted by a violent, punishing state, for no other reason than repression and humiliation.

now for some reason is in Ukraine. — ssu

Yeah wonder what they could be. 'For some reason'. Not because the US and the West basically give a free pass to Israeli apartheid while hypocritically heaping focus on issues which are in their material interest.

Funny that all those who shed tears over Ukraine have nothing to say about Israel beating up people in their places of worship on holy days. Just radio silence about Israel being a brutal, racist, settler-colonial state engaging in wanton, everyday abuse.

Thanks bae