The bill bans any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records.
The bill bans any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records.
Sorry for the late response, I didn't have much time to reply yesterday but I did want to make sure to follow up on what you said.
Nah, I hear you. They're valid concerns, they just seemed a bit misplaced. Seems like we're on the same page at this point though. It is definitely important to be aware of how we're coming across to people when we are trying to persuade them, and it's also worthwhile to discuss the best strategies for doing that.
Maybe? While imperialism clearly is the direction that capitalism takes as it develops and consumes everything in its path, there are so so many unknown variables on a world where the US empire has collapsed and where climate chaos inevitably has ensued, it's impossible to predict how a country is going to move forward into that future, in no small part because it's impossible to predict what the material conditions will be in any given country. We might have the same concern with any currently capitalist country (which I realize you pointed out by referencing Germany as another example).
Personally, I would just call it anti-imperialist while a country is legitimately fighting against imperialism but stop and call it imperialism if/when it's actually doing imperialism itself. But I can understand why some people wouldn't be comfortable with that and I'd be open to being convinced that we should use the term more specifically with a tighter definition.
Historically, yeah. They stood to be the economic powerhouses of the world. It's the reason why the US wants to drive a wedge between Russia and Germany right now and prevent any cooperation between them (hence their bombing of Nordstream) let alone an alliance that would threaten US hegemony/supremacy. It's also why it's such a fucking tragedy that Germany didn't succeed in revolution and building Germany as a socialist state alongside the USSR. Had that happened, we could well all be living in FALGSC right now.
And you're right on, it seems contemporary Germany is choosing to be a good vassal to its US master by accepting the US's destruction of their industrial productivity and towing the line on pointing at Putin's Russia as being the great evil. Also "derisking" from China. All of that's no surprise though.
Well yes, but not just protecting their sovereignty but also explicitly challenging US imperialism across the globe. They are fighting imperialism militarily and economically. And they say they are even doing so ideologically. For example: Russia to Focus on Ending US Hegemony: Foreign Policy Concept. Russia and China are openly committed to working together to bring about a true multipolar world. There was that meeting between Xi and Putin last March... and I tried to find a non-lib source for it... I know we had one posted, but I think the user who posted it deleted their account and I can't find it, but there are plenty of lib articles talking about the two megalomaniacal dictators meeting and in cahoots to destroy freedom.
All this is to say that there are reasons I think it's appropriate to call Russia anti-imperialist beyond just sovereignty and not being part of "the west." Though that is part of it. Even though they may be anti-imperialist, that doesn't automatically make them "good" or a state that we as leftists should look to as if it's something to emulate. It's not. At all. Russia is rather grotesquely reactionary (I think the US is worse in a lot of ways, but that's a pretty fucking low bar). This OP topic is proof enough of that. That's why we must always include the "critical" part to when we say we support Russia's anti-imperialist activities.
I do get where you're coming from for sure, and no, I wouldn't consider that lib at all, I'd say it's pretty accurate. Any capitalist state is incentivized to do imperialism, but until they're actually doing imperialism, they shouldn't be counted among those who actively are doing imperialism. Especially if the state not doing the imperialism is fighting to stop the imperialism of the states that are. Kind of a mouthful, but hopefully that makes sense. I know there are eloquent comrades here who could and would word it much better than that.
Even if your words were ineloquent they lost no meaning for it.
I think we're pretty aligned at this point. I guess my suggestion would be to propose using it as a verb. "They are doing A-I" "They are advancing A-I"