halfpipe [they/them]

Yeah, people did start to figure this out two years ago, once Russia pulled back and settled in for a long war. NATO governments spent billions more to procure shells and artillery pieces, and on incentives to get the arms industry to build more factory lines and supply lines.

But decades of neoliberalism have gutted the states ability to do anything itself, or to compel a corporation to do anything, even something as simple as build an artillery shell that was designed in the 1870s. The end result is that the incentive money was used to streamline and automate the existing, privately owned, factories, allowing them to fire workers and run more cheaply , but not to actually expand production. And with billions more dollars chasing the same supply of shells, the cost of an artillery shell has now skyrocketed to ~$9,000 a shell.

I still think that Trump fatigue and the repeal of Roe give him enough of a floor that there’s no chance of a complete electoral teeth kicking, but if I still gave a shit about the Democrats I’d be worried.

Yeah, turns out all of this high tech satellite guided shit can be easily defeated by electronic warfare if its used against an enemy that has the time and resources to adapt to it. This is the first time anyone had a chance to figure that out though, because the US has only ever used it against unarmed farmers and goat herders.

Well, at least it’s not as bad as the F-35, the multi trillion dollar jet that fails to both electronic warfare and rain.

If anyone is wondering why the POW/MIA flag is a thing in U.S. politics, you should really read up on it because its a fascinating example of boomer brainworms.

After the Vietnamese got good at shooting down U.S. aircraft, the U.S. tried to massage casualty figures by reporting the dead aircrews as missing. Except their families took the Pentagon at its word and believed they were truly prisoners, and began agitating to get a political deal to bring them home. As the war dragged on into the 70s the Pentagon started using the families as propaganda for a lost war, acting like they needed to prolong the war to save the thousands of imprisoned airmen. Subsequently, grifters started selling all kinds of POW merchandise to draw attention to the thousands of U.S. soldiers that Nixon claimed were still imprisoned in Vietnam.

Then the war ended, and the five hundred or so guys that really were prisoners came home, and you’d think the gravy train would end there as the truth came out, but no, Americans believed it was all a hoax. The government was covering something up, and there must really be more than a thousand US soldiers still held in Vietnam. More POW merchandise was sold than ever before, there were blockbuster movies about going back to Vietnam to free the prisoners, there were flyovers for the POWs at football stadiums. Ronald Reagan himself believed it and made threats to resume bombing if the soldiers weren’t returned. Americans started traveling to Vietnam to buy information about the POWs and try to bribe people to secure their release, and a lot of Vietnamese people got free money selling bogus rumors and scraps of old US uniforms. This shit continued well into the 90s, with every president giving a big speech for the POW families every year, and the US being unable to normalize relations with Vietnam until almost the 2000s because of it.

pre-covid, It used to be a fairly chill place for people who had reached the “acceptance” stage of grief to look at graphs of ice sheet coverage and talk about maybe learning to grow potatoes.

I hadn’t checked it in years, but it looks like the depressed climate scientists have been replaced by full blown survivalists and scared normies who think that collapse will be something fast, like a disaster movie, instead of the ongoing grind of people watching prices going up as wages stay the same, needing to hang on to clothing longer, no longer being able to see a doctor, or knowing their children will probably be unable to buy homes and start their own families.

Ukraine was always going to get destroyed under Biden. By the time he was elected there was no possible off ramp, and the ultra nationalists just would not stop shelling the separatist republics.

Trying to sanction the entire Russian economy in 2022 , thereby undoing the Sino-Soviet split . putting Russia, China and Iran into an alliance based on shared grievances , and creating a new center of power and finance in the world for the first time since 1991? That was entirely an own goal on the part of the west.

25k NGO’s for 3.7 million people is closer to 1 NGO for every 150 people.

How much of the Georgian economy is just NGO money at this point?

We were saying 6 months ago that there would be a crackdown, simply because the US can’t support a genocidal colonial project if the victims can livestream their suffering to the world.

But what’s really weird here, and I think no one could have predicted, is the mass suppression and arrest of Ivy League student protestors. They’re protesting peacefully, which they’ve been told is the only moral and acceptable way. They’re not making any material demands, and they’re not tied into a workers movement that could strike and threaten capital. Anyone with knowledge of previous college protests and the academic year could have told them that this is harmless, and that it would fizzle out as summer started, but instead they’ve violently cracked down in a way that’s causing the protests to spread, while also radicalizing and blackballing the children of privilege , the people that are supposed to carry on the ideological future of liberalism and sign up to be the next generation of the imperial bureaucracy and the NGOs.

It’s going to try, but it’s not 1992 anymore, there are other centers of power and financing in the world.

That’s pretty bad , damn, it took Trump the covid winter + January 6th to finally fall below 40%.

Probably doesn’t help that Biden now looks like he belongs in a sarcophagus.

It’s amazing they went with “friendly fire” to describe shooting three guys waving a white flag with their hands up, then chasing down the guy who survived the initial massacre and murdering him in cold blood as he begged for his life in Hebrew.

Yeah , I’m not surprised. If you’re constantly online the way an 18-24 year old is, then for the past few months you’ve been exposed to thousands of images and videos of very relatable kids, teens and twenty somethings being put through unimaginable horror.

There’s probably going to be some kind of crackdown on the internet soon. The US can’t support a genocidal colonial project if the victims can livestream their suffering to the world.

which is amazing considering that both times it was basically just a coin flip in terms of how the margins worked out.

and Biden still would have flat out lost if it hadn’t been for Covid.

I keep thinking the situation can’t get any more vile , but it keeps happening

Netanyahu’s entire network of graft and political control is now more unstable than a house of cards, and the only thing that could possibly prop it back it up is a military victory over Hamas.

Bombing refugee columns isn’t enough, they need boots on the ground.

They spent decades trying every possible way to get a deal or some kind of accommodation that would let them live and build something, and all it ever got them was more settlers and more death. Shit, it wasn’t that long ago that they tried a Ghandi style peaceful march to the ghetto walls , the Israeli’s shot 8000+ of them and the world hardly noticed.

I took a long time to get to this point. Conditions have to become completely intolerable before the average person decides that a fight against jets, drone swarms and automated machine guns is preferable to life under occupation.

The Israeli security state has a reputation for competence. I wonder, were they also hollowed out be decades of neoliberal policies’?

Probably doesn’t help that the political leadership consists of a bunch of guys who had to pull every dirty trick to keep themselves and their friends in office, because otherwise they’d be in prison for corruption.

It’s way too late at this point. Two decades of insane US foreign policy have forced China, Russia and Iran into a partnership, so instead of taking on China they’d be taking on all of Asia, and that’s just not possible.

How the fuck can they read accounts of SS Galicia killing tens of thousands of civilians, and burning men, women and children alive and then be like “Thank you for your service”.

They must be getting spooked by all the public admiration and sympathy for the assassin, which doesn’t seem to be fading away at all.