TreadOnMe [none/use name]

@VComrade

To continue our conversation on the previous thread:

Again, no they don’t have alot to lose. At this point in time, it has far less to do with what they have to lose, and much more to do with what they gain by continuing a controlled conflict. The West (in particular the Democrats, but everyone gets their hands dirty here) gets to continue it’s political money laundering operations, both sides get to continue to develop their MIC, and both sides get to test combat technology in a live-fire environment.

Winning or losing doesn’t matter at this point, both sides are making money in their respective games, it’s why bourgeois wars are interminable, and why communism is an absolute necessity for war to ever have a chance to end. They don’t have to have an end goal, the war itself is profitable for them.

The CPC was so incompetent that they managed to convince their largest geopolitical adversary to fund their reconstruction, deindustrializing themselves in the process.

Also the Asian financial crisis is what helped devalue labor there to the point that the U.S. wholesale sent entire industries to China. In a market system, it basically foretold future Chinese dominance. These kinds of things are spelled out in concepts such as Alan Geeenspan’s ‘creative destruction’ or the idea of ‘market cycles’.

Gordon Chang is a hack who doesn’t even read his own neo-liberal peers, or bother to understand the ideology that he is swimming in.

As I said before, there was a period of time when that was the case, right around when Russia launched their massive two-pronged offensive, when Ukraine, if it had massed even 70% of it’s armed forces at the time, could have not only threatened Crimea (which the Russian bourgeois absolutely care about) but even threaten the civil war to spill into Russia itself, which would delegitamize bourgeois rule in Russia. Hence the need launch said offensive.

However, that time has passed for awhile now. Ukraine is a shambling zombie state, propped up by Western governments, lacking any real substantial offensive capabilities. It is no longer a threat, militarily or economically. And while they are no longer a threat to the Russian bourgeois, they do provide them with other opportunities.

As Epstein said, there is often more opportunity in collapse than in growth.

Partially because they can’t push without a mass mobilization, which puts the popularity of the war (which is popular to the majority of Russians, at least at the moment) in jeopardy, partially because any kind of offensive, even an overwhelming one, is an extremely risky gamble, that even if successful will lead to the death of tens of thousands, partially because much like for the West, Ukraine at this point is a testing ground for modern military tech and tactics, which Russia can then use to improve their military capabilities for any potential outright conflict with NATO, and partially because spooking the Europeans into outright mobilization, as opposed to trickling in their mentally ill and ideologically motivated, isn’t really on the Russian to-do list, they would rather go back to trading with them, even if that will never happen.

Mostly however, it is because it doesn’t as actually affect anything anymore, particularly those in the Russian oligarchy. It’s like the same reason we won’t stop fighting wars, they do not affect those in charge. There was a short period of time when that wasn’t true, when Ukraine had a military force that could contest Russia and threaten their government, but that likely hasn’t been the case anymore for over a year now. Better to keep the front lines open, minimize having to deal with outright partisians.

We’ll see if it works out for them, if it becomes more like an infected wound as opposed to a quarantine.

That literally isn’t true, according to OEC and World Bank stats, they are the second largest, about $100,000,000 dollars, likely several thousand tons, behind China.

I couldn’t find exactly how much sulfuric acid that was by ton in the last year, but the cursory Google search consensus is that in 2025 China dominated the export market by a large margin, with the U.S. being one of the major importers (if that is directly from China, difficult to say, but we imported $399 million of sulfuric acid last year, of which Canada could, if we are buying all of it, account for less than half of).

What exactly were you expecting to happen here?

I don’t even really know what the plan here is for China, aside from maybe disincentivising their internal manufacturing, or cause supply chain disruptions, but to deny that they aren’t the largest, by far, exporter in the world is hilarious.

Idk, the thinking of anyone who is getting into a religion that isn’t directly related to their parent’s cultural heritage is usually fairly suspect to me, as they have tendency (especially if they are autistic) to take the tenets of the religion far more seriously than someone who was born and raised in the religion, not understanding the developed unsaid cultural norms, or thinking of those developments as perversions. And this is especially true for people getting into more recently developed religions, such as Norse Neo-Paganism.

People like that are, in my experience, almost impossible to talk to, regardless of their mental state, because their natural tendency is to live entirely within the ideology they have constructed for themselves in their head. They simply do not have a similar mechanism of cause and effect, which means that it is extremely difficult to have a reasonable conversation.

I am happy that you were able to bring them down from the ledge, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they get back up there with either something different or the exact same thing. As my anthropology professor used to say, “An idea shared by many is the basis of a culture, an idea held by one is the basis of a psychosis.”

Best of luck seriously, I have done the same for my own friends suffering in similar ways (literally talking a guy out of going to Ukraine).

A quick caveat. Not all Norse Pagans are Nazis. Nazis have appropriated alot of Norse Pagan Iconography, particularly runic script, but there is a substantial community of Norse Pagans (particularly in the Minnesota and Wisconsin area) who are Norse Pagans because it is a large part of their Norwegian and Swedish tradition, though in the past there was a veneer of Christianity that has been shorn with modernity. These people have traditional Norse beliefs in gender and sexuality, which is that gender and sexuality are independent choices by people, fluid throughout their lives, and even potentially situationally. They are generally not nationalists, but they are typically some form of incoherent libertarianism.

The large problem within these communities is that they have a serious Nazi bar problem, especially at their festivals, as, being libertarians, they are of the opinion that their money spends the same as everyone else’s, and as long as they aren’t actively causing issues or have open swastika tattoos, they shouldn’t be ostracized.

That said, the white supremacists are constantly ridiculed for their lack of actual historical knowledge on the subject, especially in their use of Runes, which they treat as a grab-bag, when there are two distinct sets.

That is stupid. It is way more likely that it is poly market bettors, trying to make money with insider information.

God fuck the Democrats. “They are fighting a different unpopular war than the one we want to fight, so unfair! pouts”

Well, for one, these fights are extremely categorically different. Long range missile salvos being launched tens if not hundreds of kilometers away from where they are impacting.

For two, Iran clearly no longer gives a shit about the propaganda side to the western world, or even the world in general. They are getting what they need from who they need it from, and they are winning the war. When you are winning, you don’t need propaganda.

For three, ever since the purges three months ago, the IRGC has been extremely tight and disciplined, and I will bet that they have deals with Russia and China around that as well.

Much like with OSINT guys, their numbers are absolutely wrong, and even if they did know the real number, they are under no obligation to actually be honest with you, and the incentive is always to lie, if simply to make sure less people actually know what is happening. Knowledge is power, and they know that.

I think it has more to do with the fact that they likely have a deal with China to either give or sell or trade them triangulation points (as I believe they only have one satellite in space) or maybe weather data, depending on how they are doing this.

On it’s own it’s not actually direct military aid, just data, but paired with their data or placed into a missile targeting algorithm (which are probably more streamlined and sophisticated than our notoriously bloated military software programs, especially since Iran educates among the highest numbers of engineers per capita), it creates a missile system that is extremely accurate.

Who knows though. They could just be that good, in which case it wouldn’t surprise me if China is now buying data from them.

You’d be shocked how difficult it is to date someone if you disagree with them that ghosts are real.

Man, remember when they hit the Green Zone exactly equidistant between multiple buildings and people told us we were coping?

It’s almost like no labor value is actually being drives from the exchange value

Russia, post-Soviet Union, particularly in the 90’s, had exactly these problems because they started privatizing all of their shit, on the advice of Western economicists. Suddenly, issues that weren’t even comprehended, like electricity going out, were commonplace across Russia. Part of Putin’s whole deal was wrangling together and punishing people who did this (who he knew, because they were collaborators in the project).

Putin is not and will never be a communist, because he is a Russian nationalist at heart, but he recognized that you can’t completely guy your public sector without huge consequences.

Waow, you mean that the collapse of the Soviet Union, when they applied the very same austerity techniques, none of which actually helped the economy?

We have WWII at home.

Nothing like a little international graft.

If they are doing that, it’s just a classic case of “buy low sell high.”