The point that the USSR would have invaded China due to the cultural revolution(or perhaps you are referencing something else I am completely unaware of) is absurd. It only intervened when bourgeois counter-rev was impending within the warsaw pact when it was invited.

The real nature of the question here is not persay the thought process behind how someone could mistake the USSR as an imperialist power equal to the USA, but how the theoretical underpinnings there intertwined with the great proletarian revolutions struggles within military politicization. Once we have that we do not have to throw the idea away wholesale, and it certainly ties into social imperialism in a real sense, and SPD's being critiqued by Lenin as an origin of that phrase. I do not have persay finalized thoughts there.

To your second point it feels a bit callous to list off a couple points and not grapple with the fundamental failure of decolonizing the world along socialist lines. Certainly China, the USSR, and Mongolia were able to draw reasonable borders all together, but the sino-vietnam-cambodia war is just one example that is clearly formed by colonialism and chinese revisionism and persists to this day. And that underlying issue, not making up a tally of W's and L's, is what I am interested in. But certainly point taken that successes are possible, although quite a few of them likely have to due with quelling nationalistic urges in border regions more so than socialist-oblige.

Where to even begin? Yugoslavian regional desires? Vietnamese Doi Moi and how it emerges from Le Duan and how that stems from the differences in the north and the south's unequal development despite a common struggle? Che's writings on USSR/Cuba/Free Trade/Sugar? Defining what differs between Khrushchev or Deng(its nothing)? How soviet "social imperialism" is in retrospect clearly subordinated to American imperialism and now China repeats the same mistakes today. The eurocommunism-maoist split and how that really does derive from various European communist parties and just about every single USA communist parties revisionism, which plays out now in various rightist deviations towards what "actually exists" and from that "what is actually possible".

And of course all of this precedes the answer to why post colonial bourgeois nationalism flared up in border struggles with Vietnam and China, and now regrettably we have a china that continues many of these trends. Laos and Vietnam still at least exist as a good model of interstate relations, or much of the Soviet unions internal borders at least before capitalist restoration and the return of genocidal ambitions we see today.

not to be trite with you, this question is massive, and arguably as fundamental to communism as any other question nowadays, given its real applicability on how revisionism re-asserts itself time and time again, although its particular contours are obviously not at all limited to "who gets to own a couple islands along the amur river". No easy book to start with, but Albania-China relations is probably as good a starting point as any.

The podcasts failure to really materially interrogate the origins behind Chinese revisionism instead just hand waving away "its all realpolitik now" is fairly disappointing, although of course this same issue comes up with soviet revisionism in the Cuban and Afghanistan seasons as well. Its very very well put together(although the Korean season I think better exemplified its desire to be a high production value drama) and obviously the soundtrack does a great deal of adding emotional weight, but overall its superficial discussion of the class structure, land reform efforts, and revolutionary wartime activity I think places it in an almost unhelpful place since it can give the impression to someone who listened to it that they now "understand" the topic at hand. In a way that is obviously very common to the high speed flow of ideas we all exist in. But not helpful to make any downstream conclusions such as "why did land reform in much of southeast asia succeed and or fail", why is vietnam now also "market socialist" and how does this play into their modern revisionism. But perhaps I ask too much of a 10 hour podcast.

Highly recommend imperialism and the development myth as a necessary book based in Lenin's theory of imperialism, value added manufacture, and more, to dispel any myths about the opening up and reform within china having a "good" end.

and for those still defending that china will be pressing the big red socialism button any time soon, or even promoting more SOE's as compared to further marketization, there recent plenary has plenty of details that should pour some water on that. http://english.www.gov.cn/policies/latestreleases/202407/21/content_WS669d0255c6d0868f4e8e94f8.html “While promoting independent operation of natural monopoly businesses in sectors such as energy, railway, telecommunications, water conservancy, and public utilities, we will advance market-oriented reforms in the competitive areas of these sectors and improve regulatory institutions and mechanisms.”

if one cant accurately delineate between khrushchev or deng, between what the NEP was and what "opening up" was, how losing control the states monopoly on trade will affect your countries relationship to the law of value, how modern monopoly works there's little sense in trying to speculate further. all of these are questions I am still attempting to unravel, but my travels so far have lead me to be more neutral on china's long term prospects.

of course, all of us are here to defend china from imperialist aggression, but you can take your pick of other more optimistic analysts, michael hudson has clout around here, but his "finance" thesis I have always found to be a bit more vibes based than I like.

https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2021/11/25/dark-eucharist-of-the-real-god/

For your consideration

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/pdb8-6-2001.pdf

folks literally have access to gigabytes of declassified documents describing how Bush 100% knew of and was consistently briefed on the forthcoming attacks and and how the hijackers stayed with an FBI informant and yet still go "hmmm, idk if we knew beforehand"

at a certain point "occam's razor" just defaults to "what can I say that's still respectable in most circles" and not "what does the evidence add up to"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

"hijacking planes to be shot down or given the appearance of being shot down" just some food for thought.

vis a vis 9/11 and trying to understand the facts of the case, because I think its an important part of demystifying the world, understanding the fact that people in power(bush cheney rumsfeld et all) would kill thousands of their own citizens in order to stoke the fires of war. That one can come to incorrect conclusions about our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the modern american security state/industrial complex if they dont understand that salient facts about how we got there and this key event in the process.

but I would also posit that a lot of liberals and folks still believe in some fundamental goodness in the world today, that neoliberal capitalism arcs towards justice, and find it impossible to reckon with the reality that the bad guys really do control the world, and do terrible things to keep their control. To understand that would be to drop the illusions, and maybe to have to do something about it all(revolution eh?), so they prefer to remain in their preformed opinions about it all.

It is wild that people can know about operation condor, our involvement in drug smuggling in Vietman and Afghanistan, the gulf of Tonkin incident, getting Nazis out of Europe and into places of power around the globe post WWII, our wholesale support of genocides and their subtle coverups in nearly every armed conflict we've been in since WWII, etc etc and yet when they come around to JFK or 9/11 its just "his head did that" and "idk m8 maybe the planes missed the airport"

Unequivocally one of the best anti-war games out there. A true masterpiece that has far more depth than it lets on at face value

very cool

absolutely. thats really what keeps on hitting me. When will i feel good about going outside without a mask? the answer seems to get fuzzier and fuzzier. and the western world just keeps pushing people to "move on" it feels . BLEH

Certainly the titles are different, however the purpose of the two organizations is extremely similar, with goals of epidemiology and public health, so as a general terminology I feel the comparison can be used for some convenience. But fair nonetheless. Obviously many variants of the disease have been around for some time, but as we increasingly see people get resistant we can anticipate more and more of these strains that can slip away from immunity being developed, which is concerning. and as they chip away at what immunity was provided by B cells and via the vaccine(few percentage points here and there) it definitely seems possible as Jesse Bloom mentions in a linked thread that we could run out of this current vaccines efficacy before long. necessitating another intense round of vaccine development that as we've seen in the USA, despite stunning initial results, are being rolled out like a train wreck. And T cell immunity will be important but absent cleaner data about vaccine persistence and without seeing what new strains are cooking up in the dakota's im just concerned.

get the vaccine, but damn covid is slippery.

moved to the PNW with the express purpose of getting into the great outdoors. It was all it has been hyped up to be.

uber will never, ever, let that slide. if they spent 200 million to ensure they dont have to give healthcare to their workers, theyll spend as much to ensure anyone who tries to compete with them is unable to do so.

I hope that isn't the case. This is a good discussion either way though, thanks for starting it! The symposium I posted, if you have time, goes into a couple of the safety concerns from major vaccine trials. That being said, while I have limited(and tbh biased) faith in the NIH/CDC, I can acknowledge that other governmental systems will make foolhardy decisions for a potential one up in the game of electoral-ism, and I do not have faith in that. The talks I posted also go into that a bit as well, how politics has corroded integrity of science. Although science is corroded for lots of other reasons as well.

Yeah, obviously I have huge issues with pharma profiting off of this immensely as they certainly will, but vaccines are still a huge public safety boon.

I encourage everyone hear throwing around to do some research into the practices the trials are using to ensure the integrity of the vaccine. Anecdotal accounts of side effects notwithstanding, there seems to be a broad consensus that these will be safe,( https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines a large symposium that recently occurred discussing high level COVID 19 vaccine topics, worth a listen) with a major concern being that a large percentage of people seem utterly uninterested in receiving a vaccine, which places an enormous burden on other individuals who for health reasons can not get a vaccine. Get vaccinated libs, it fucking saves lives.

make connections and comrades and support them/benefit from their support. Find ways to support socialist, pro union, and other leftist groups. Grow food and work on mutual aid. Be a kind person. We are in this together. and we can make a better future!

"You keep saying things like down with the bourgeoisie, eat the rich, sodomise the land-owners, impale all people who have more than 25 reál in their pocket, literally murder all human beings regardless of their political beliefs -- that kind of stuff."

I think the overarching rationale behind a vaccine is that if a high enough percentage of the population get a vaccine(that presumably grants high levels of immunity, that may or may not be the case in COVID, more data needs to be seen), that the disease will no longer be able to spread since its potential host population is immune. This is all to protect individuals, who due to old age, compromised immune systems, or other malignancies are unable to get the vaccine,. Flu is an excellent example of this, young individuals are less likely to die from the flu and are also have stronger immune systems and can handle a vaccine, elderly individuals with weaker immune systems can not get the vaccine but are at greater risk, hence younger individuals should get the vaccine to prevent potential spread to older people. Its altruism on a larger scale.

also keep in mind that 450 people did get Guillain-Barré syndrome with the 1976 vaccine campaign, but that was out of 45 MILLION People vaccinated. 1 case per 100,000 vaccinated individuals, and this vaccine is widely regarded as a debacle and outlier in terms of risk. Whether or not the Ford administrations panic over the new strain of flu was rationale(it probably wasnt) the risks we are talking about are minor compared to the death rates for flu or in particular COVID.

this is not to say healthy skepticism for science is a bad thing, but perspective and altruism for the broader population are key.