Smart move. 2020 showed us that “just-in-time” supply chains are a massive liability and far too fragile in the face of any disruption.

For actual policies: Xi Jinping

For the memes: Alexander Lukashenko

It’s especially hypocritical because they excluded Russia and Belarus from the Olympics.

We’ll see what happens with Hungary and Slovakia with this latest thing that’s happened where Ukraine is trying to cut off Russian oil from reaching them. The EU of course has sided with Ukraine over two of its own members, but Hungary and Slovakia have threatened to cut off electricity transfers to Ukraine which would be a big deal since a lot of it comes through there, plus Hungary is saying it would block EU funds to Ukraine until this is resolved. But so far it’s only talk, so we’ll see if they are really serious about protecting their sovereign interests or if they end up bending the knee in the end. I don’t trust Orban, he is like Erdogan, prone to holding out until he gets a deal profitable to him and then he’ll do a 180 on his position, and while i am sympathetic to Slovakia’s government they are a small country and there’s only so much they can resist if the EU decides to apply serious pressure on them.

Nationalism = chauvinism by definition

I would slightly alter that and say “nationalism in uncolonized nations = chauvinism by definition”. Because nationalism can be a progressive force in anti-colonial struggles

He then said that this is a holdover from Stalin who kept the colonial system from the Tsar […]. He said that Soviet Union was a colonial nation as well

First off, if the Tsarist system was kept it wouldn’t have been (only) Stalin who kept it, it would be Lenin and the other Bolsheviks who founded the Soviet Union and who decided what should be done about the national question in regards to the nationalities of the Russian empire. In this context it is useful to read Stalin’s “Marxism and the National Question” to see how the Bolsheviks thought about this issue and whether they had a colonial or anti-colonial mentality (spoiler alert: it’s the latter).

Secondly, i would suggest that whoever says things like this should look into how the Soviet political system and the Soviet economy functioned in practice. Politically the smaller republics were over-represented compared to the larger ones like Russia through the Soviet of Nationalities. Economically the minority republics often received priority supply of goods and preferential investment in their development and infrastructure, much more so per capita than the RSFSR did.

Due to this the Soviet Union has been labeled by liberal academics who seriously studied the Soviet policy toward nationalities an “Affirmative Action Empire”. This means that they effectively practiced reverse imperialism, they were an anti-empire. Where empires siphon off wealth from the periphery to enrich the core, the SU did the opposite, sometimes to such a degree that it created resentment among the Russian majority. This is a point frequently brought up by modern day anti-communist Russians to criticize the Bolsheviks and their policies.

In addition to these economic policies, the political and cultural policies of the Bolsheviks were also heavily biased in favor of promoting minority nationalities and their cultures, their literature, teaching their language, etc. it is not unlike what China does today but perhaps to an even greater degree. Again this is also something that Russian nationalists nowadays heavily criticize. They point for instance to the extensive and sometimes over-zealous policies of Ukrainization that occurred throughout the 1920s.

No matter which side of this you stand on (communists of course are pro-decolonization), it cannot be denied that the Bolsheviks were very serious about undoing the colonial legacy of the Russian empire. This is something they wrote extensively about, and when you study the history of the Soviet Union that you see them again and again make serious efforts to implement in their policies.

You mean Austria? Australia should be decolonized.

That’s a good explanation.

Being European and hearing how people around me talk i am very pessimistic about the possibility of any European country (minus Serbia) managing to break free and go its own way, but i hope i’m wrong. For me the real wild card and weakest link in NATO is Turkey.

Germany must take responsibility as the leading power in Europe. We are all in Europe waiting for Germany to end the military conflict in Ukraine.

Yeah, good luck with that. If that’s your best hope you’ll be waiting for a very long time. Germany is a total basket case, don’t expect anything reasonable or rational to come from this country any time soon.

It would be great if they hadn’t passed a law making it illegal to negotiate with Russia.

It’s very expensive to be poor.

Thanks for letting me know. I must have missed that post.

🤡 🌎

https://breachmedia.ca/cbc-whitewashed-israels-crimes-gaza-firsthand/

https://theintercept.com/2024/01/04/cnn-idf-censor/

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/04/cnn-staff-pro-israel-bias

This shit reads like my essays where my teachers were grading me on the inclusion of specific key words and phrases.

That’s exactly what this is. Time after time we’ve heard from journalists who blew the whistle on their publications that they have internal rules that state they have to include certain phrases and are not allowed to use others when they report on politically sensitive topics like Palestine, Ukraine, etc. You don’t get a piece like this past the editors if you don’t adhere to the rules, and the rules are handed down from the very top where the bosses usually have ties to the state department, the intelligence agencies, Zionist organizations, and so on.

Massive W for Palestine and a big W for China as well showing that their brokering of peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia was not a fluke, but rather an indicator of where the global diplomatic center has shifted to. Outside of the increasingly insular West, China is seen as the most honest, trustworthy and unbiased third party for countries and rival factions to peacefully settle their disputes through. With China’s help win-win solutions can be found for even the most bitter feud. This is a nightmare scenario for the imperialist West as they thrive on conflict, discord and disunity. China is rolling back the imperialists’ global “divide and rule” strategy one piece on the Go-board at a time.

They’re both clowns.

This is actually my biggest criticism of these people. Ideological disagreements aside, it’s all just so performative, it’s more entertainment than anything else. They are not trying to do real politics or real organizing, they are trying to be content creators or social media influencers with a revolutionary aesthetic. Hence their pretentious LARP-y language.

I’m sure there are a few exceptions to this of course but by and large this is the impression i get.