Biden can't even warmonger properly lmao. Looks like Zelensky and Ukraine could be turning away from US and opening up some diplomatic channels with Russia.
US tried so hard to make this into a war but everyone seems to be getting sick of their sundowning ramblings.
Seems to Have backfired spectaculary , ( But i have to admit they had me for 2 days.... , fucking Psy-Ops... ) .. the amazing part was that it appears to have been a Schoolboy Plot , to get a Proxy war in Ukraine and to force germany away from russia (probably with the greens in the goverment they speculated they would follow) and the Result is that Germany distanced themself from Nato (with Silent backing from most of the EU , especially France) , approved NS2 , and Ukraine is distancing itself from the USA currently . . . . .
Great Success... , oh and Cuba , venezuela and Nicaragua will soon host Russian troops it seems ? ... great deal you did there , trading Ukraine (non vital interest) against the Monroe Doctrin (the Vital strategic interest) and not even getting Ukraine....
:soviet-playful:
I can see Cuba allowing Russian troops for us safety reasons, but they are ideological opposites now. Shit sucks
:sicko-wistful:
This is why it’s so interesting to me that Russia is still treated as a Big Bad. We should get along great with Russia now! I’m not sure what it is, is it just leftover red scare Russophobia? Or is Russia too unwilling to bend to American pressure and we just don’t like that? Or something else?
Russia has consolidated control of its gas industry under a cartel which is politically aligned with the state, rather than global finance. They're still capitalist monsters polluting the earth for a quick buck, but they are not for sale the way the west would like them to be.
Putin is doing basically nationalistic capitalism, so only Russian capitalists can exploit Russian workers (and Central Asian immigrants). Which I guess is marginally better for Russians but Wall Street hates that they can't buy up all those Russian assets for themselves. Thus they have demanded that the US government embark on a maximum pressure campaign to open Russia's markets by overthrowing Putin. It has not been working lol
We wanna take things back to the 90s when Western companies owned everything productive in Russia. Just a lil civil war collapse so American companies can plunder.
It's institutional Russophobia that goes back generations. The idea of Russia being a "hotbed of totalitarianism" predates the Soviet Union - before that there was constant hand wringing about the threat of "Czarism".
America is a wing of the British Empire, especially the Progressive/Federalist wing of the ruling class, and the Brits have had an insane rivalry with Russia going back to the 19th century. Aligning with Russia is a non-starter.
cuba doesn't need troops but a brace of S400 anti-air systems would really piss USA off
Zelensky urged his American counterpart to "calm down the messaging," warning of the economic impact of panic, according to the official. He also said Ukrainian intelligence sees the threat differently.
lmao "dude just chill with saying my country is about to be invaded it is not good for business"
The US "national interest" is yet again clashing with the demands of late capitalism, our power is fading.
I can't help but wonder if the negative economic impact is part of the point. Asset strip Ukraine further as investment flees.
The dumbass Nazis ruling Ukraine thought they would get in on the looting, and now they're freaking out because the US is trying to turn them into a warzone. Serves them right, they trusted a Yankee!
Hedging their bets maybe? Leave as little capital and petit-bourgeois as possible in what could become Russian controlled territory?
i think yankeeland doesn't get that to most other countries, war is not like the first thing you do when there's "tensions"
Diplomacy is a communist invention. Real freedom-loving men just gun each other down at the slightest provocation, that's what made America great back in the day.
America, collapsing under the weight of accumulated myths about itself
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-180968013/
Yeah, the whole idea about the past being some chaotic lawless period is false. Certainly, less centralized governments are less capable of enforcing certain laws across a large territory, but even medieval cities had weapon regulations - you couldn't just walk in open-carrying a halberd
As someone else noted, America's lack of any war on their soil for over 150 years has really allowed them to never have to ponder such things
White House disputes account
Biden was quoted as saying it was a "perfect phone call"
Tell Zelensky to do the right thing, I want nothing!!
reposting a reddit comment I made cause everyone including a few left podcast I listen too are ignoring;
Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany already signed a ceasefire; www.dw.com/en/russia-ukraine-agree-to-uphold-ceasefire-in-normandy-talks/a-60556387 , why is America continuing to pump up war fever?
I saw someone describe this a mini Suez moment which is kinda apt as far as loosing legitimacy goes, and I guess the US strategy is to ignore it, but obviously states are tacking note
Why does the US seem to be so incompetent? They have all the resources they could ever wish for their schemes but somehow it always seems to fizzle out in some sort of humiliation.
Is it American exceptionalism that makes them unable to realistically analyse the world?
Old as fuck corpses running everything from top to bottom who have become high on the success of people who were massively more competent that came long before them combined with genuine very real disasters and crises that they think they can just ignore until they disappear.
The problem with being so heavily propagandised is also that while the in-group might understand that it's all bullshit propaganda, 90% of the people in your organisation BELIEVE that shit. In the past many more understood it was propaganda bullshit and got on with their jobs properly. Now it's just idiots that don't know better throughout the entire structure.
I I'm absolutely convinced about the propaganda part. The enforcers of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie have been getting high on their own supply and lots of them actually thinks that forcing through a war between Russia and the Ukraine will actually being democracy and freedom to the Ukraine and beyond. This dissonance between observable reality and ideological beliefs makes it very hard for them to make rational decisions.
The people at the top really do believe their own propaganda. Honestly, even more so than the people at the bottom.
Yes. They're getting high off of their own supply. In the 60s and 70s, when the CIA could actually do things competently, the propaganda they pushed was about how evil the Soviet Union is and it's a dictatorship blah blah blah but if you read their internal memos they all knew that was a lie, and could operate with the worldview that was more similar to reality rather than the lies. Nowadays, many of the operatives buy the lies that were pushed in the 60s, the whole government apparatus believes the lies, and it's very difficult to operate competently in the world when everything you believe about it is a useful piece of American propaganda and nothing more. Combine that with the hereditary nature of American inequality, legacy admissions to universities, etc, and the entire bureaucracy of the State Department and others are filled with grade-inflated failsons who are only there by nature of birth and not ability, and that goes a long way to explaining the recent American lack of competence.
In the 60s and 70s, when the CIA could actually do things competently
Not really, the CIA was just a bunch of rich failkids back then too. They fucked up Bay of Pigs. They never got Castro. Most of the "wins" the Deep State got back then were just the result of the US's sheer dominance post-WW2, and even then they were just bullying weaker states in their "wins". Now that that's gone, the rot is being exposed.
The CIA absolutely was rich failkids back then too but they didn't buy their own supply and they did catch quite a few wins. Iran, Chile, Zaire, Guatemala, Indonesia, etc. And lots of other smaller operations worldwide. Haven't done much in recent years besides get their entire spy network wiped out in China, though.
Haven’t done much in recent years besides get their entire spy network wiped out in China, though.
Did they died?
spoiler
:sicko-blur:
Yes. :sicko-crowd: :xi-reactionary-spotted: :xi-gun:
The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.
Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.
But there was no disagreement about the damage. From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.
Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.’s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.
According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.
Red fash moment :sicko-beaming:
Fascism is when you execute spies with guns. Democracy is when you execute spies with lethal injections. :very-intelligent:
There's some actual discreet events where ideological narrative overtook factual observation. HW and Team B taking over the CIA would be the marker of that. However it now seems like honest "liberal" imperialists are in charge now and are realizing they can't do shit because it never worked like they imagined.
Is it American exceptionalism that makes them unable to realistically analyse the world
Yes, US foreign policy has always relied on America's exceptional position in the world. Namely, having access to so much material wealth in its own little corner of the world has allowed for decades of winging it and just "doing us" to work out no matter what As a famous joke goes:
“A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.”
The end of the Cold War made the American ruling class even more obstitnant and uncooperative with the rest of the world. The attitude towards Russia is emblematic of that. America won, the Yeltsin government of chaos backed by Clinton was supposed to be done-zo for those nasty Asiatic Russians (they're natural Authoritarians old bean, we learned that from our UK allies!)
Now that the US is no longer exceptional, the classic playbook of "the US gets what it wants" is being exposed for the sham it is.
Standard decaying empire moment. We're so used to being ahead, we just half-ass everything at best.
The answer is honestly very long and complicated, especially because it's likely a combination of many factors, ranging from lead exposure, to nepotism, to complacency, to culture... you could easily write a thesis on this, or even one aspect of it.
Biden somehow maneuvers this into an American invasion of Ukraine:biden-troll:
"See, communism is when people share everything equally, so these jokes work because you change singular posessive sounding things to "our." Like commies do." - :so-true:
Destroying the azov battalion would be the first time the US military did a good thing in 77 years
Bold of you to assume the US would destroy the Azov battalion instead of appointing it's leaders as heads of the new US puppet regime.
Operation paperclip 2, where we replace already existing talented scientist with mediocre Ukrainian nazis.
Speedrun this country to collapse, literally the only way forward for humanity.
biden is sundowning :geordi-no:
USA is sundowning :geordi-yes:
I do appreciate Biden just saying "Look we aren't the empire we were. We're not going to war with Russia or staying in Afghanistan." And then the entire Washington elite just rips their hair out. Who will pay them to make articles about how we must go to war if we never go to war???
It's hard to cultivate idealogues when all you reward are opportunist careerist grifters
That's not quite true. They are still very good at suppressing domestic media and online dissent. It's honestly the only thing they seem to be effective at and is likely the true metric for new-blood meritocratic success within the agency these days.
It makes sense though, the 'important matters' (foreign threats) are left to 'important people' (nepotistic in hiring) while the 'piddly shit' (domestic radicalization) is left to 'underlings' (new hire people who are actually good at their job).
