CarmineCatboy [he/him]

  • 5 Posts
  • 545 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 28th, 2022

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  • governments which the U.S. empire wants to do away with

    That’s an euphemistic way of describing what NATO did to Libya, and what it still wants to do in Syria.

    Of course the Turkish proxies in Afrin and US proxies with the SDF/PKK have a ton of reasons not to trust the Assad government. Dismantling them outright is just the means of causing another migration crisis in Turkey, which in turn is likely to end with sectarian riots at some point.

    At the end of the day however what we have is a country invaded in parallel by two NATO powers. This is not sustainable either, especially given that it’s cover for NATO to support Israel, invite war with Iran and steal syrian oil. The longer this continues the more resentment is gona be bred over this issue.


  • how ?

    Boots on the ground, arms, funding, air support and propaganda. US support for them is not really a controversial thing. It’s clear cut policy. The discussion at this point in Washington is wether a) US support is ultimately serving to strengthen Erdogan’s base; and b) causing NATO’s ‘middle east bulwark’ to rapproach with Syria and Russia. But the ultimate object in the middle east is to keep countries from stabilizing and to ‘contain’ russian and iranian influence. So in that respect the policy is working.

    What makes this controversial in the minds of some in the West is that at one point in the timeline Turkey and NATO were partners in Project Assad, and the US didn’t really want to help the kurdish militias fight ISIS. But that whole thing changed early into the Syrian War, when the Turks failed to keep their oil back deals with ISIS a secret. The ensuing propaganda push turned the Turks into a third faction in the Syrian War, and re-aligned the local kurds with the US military. Now the kurdish units there exist solely as part of a forever war project to further destabilize Syria and Iraq.




  • The US is squatting in the corner of the country on some oil fields

    I am only glad we agree that all heroes fighting against this occupation and seizure of syrian national resources should be supported.

    Is the situation complex? Yes, but considering that NATO has destroyed and occupied several countries in the region I don’t think people here will develop a high opinion of US proxies - be they in Yemen, Syria, Libya or Iraq.

    Lines were drawn in the sand when the western world led a decades long campaign to occupy and immiserate the middle east. Some in the region saw their fortunes in supporting that campaign. Far too many on the other side of the equation have been martyred already.











  • I miss my 10yo tripleA games for a 1/400 th of my salary

    thats the problem innit, we live off our labor. i shouldn’t have picked hard mode

    I remember vividly this rich family talking about how they could buy whatever version of Playstation was out back in the early 2010s. Meaning that they paid the full speculative price of thousands of dollars.

    It’s a big world out there and games only sell a few million globally.


  • I think the answer is that the actual calculus is ‘how much is this market-demographic willing to pay for our game’. Which is something that developers have to do on their own with multiple concerns in mind.

    Some indie devs quickly turn countries like Brazil from their largest piracy market to their largest actual market just by giving them a bigger discount. Other devs don’t have to care about that sort of thing, and assume that their niche / mainstream product will be bought regardless and that the gains from further discounts do not outweigh the discount themselves.

    Hyperinflation accelerates the latter logic. Whatever turkish people or argentineans have the money to buy games at this point will pay the full exchange rate - or get an EU/US friend to buy the game for them. Especially if multiplayer. With the full erosion of purchasing power in a country your market shrinks to that country’s elite. And the well connected few.