I have argued this for years, but a lot of people don’t like to hear it.

at its most basic, all the separatists wanted was freedom from the imperialistic core, which stole their resources and pushed for legislation that made their worlds more dangerous. If we were to bring this into the real world, the separatists could represent the third world, and the core could represent the western first world.

Like, sure, the CIS was heavily funded by banks. but the politics of the star wars galaxy don’t pair 1:1 with our politics, and they were quite literally waging an anti-imperialist war against a deeply corrupted political elite who used a cult of space wizards to carry out their bidding, then utilized the equivalent of a child slave army for crushing resistance.

Yes, Palpatine manipulated the situation, but the CIS would’ve happened without him. Palpy simply abused a long-rooted problem of the republic to make the inevitable war happen the way he wanted it to. Without him it still would’ve happened, and there are good odds the CIS could’ve won. They’re only the “bad guys” because Palpatine needed them to appear that way, so republic citizens would support the rise of the empire and the dawn of space fascism. Remove Palpatine, and the outcome for the galaxy would’ve likely have looked a lot more like a decentralized confederation that allows the rim worlds to flourish, while levelling the playing field between the core and the rim.

(also the added actual lore of the only race that came anywhere near communism was in the CIS)

It’s so frustrating when liberals explode with rage over foreign military promotional material, but swoon over the same from their own militaries.

Russia runs a recruitment ad and the liberals talk shit about how it’s propaganda, but American ads get called “badass”.

you must not spend a lot of time on leftist discords/forums or in leftist communities outside of Marxist-Leninist ones if you’ve never heard it in this context.

The issue with the logic of “converting” people on the western left is that as people learn about leftism, their sources lean away from our viewpoint. Thus enrooting anti-communism within the core of their views. If we want people to come around to our view, they either have to get here on their own or we have to get to them before the counter-revolutionary left can.

With the existence and popularity of “pan-leftism” the latter is virtually impossible at scale. There is no “converting”, only screaming at a screen in the hopes that one person out of 100 listens. And in the communities where anti-communists hold the power, there is no “converting” because our voices are actively removed.

In most cases, it doesn’t matter how many times you explain the living conditions of the USSR or debunk anti-communist propaganda. Western leftists would rather death-grip onto anti-communism than ever budge an inch to a “tankie”. Those who end up on that side of the left are essentially forced to educate themselves and radicalize out of the tarpit of “pan-leftism”.

edit; an additional point to “educate themselves”

Often those who fail to leave said tarpit end up going so deep into it that they make their anti-communism a concrete part of the ideals. This has the effect of either making them a permanent anti-communist anti-capitalist (better known as an individual who knows what is needed but refuses to do anything to achieve it), or they leave anti-capitalist ideology and drift back to the right wing. The former often taking the monicker of “post-leftist”, and the latter often being referred to as “social-democrats” in the best case, or altogether falling into Fascist ideology blocks (as anti-authoritarianism in the US is deeply rooted in the Nazi movement. If you are anti-authoritarian but not anti-capitalist the likelihood is very high that you’ll spend time in Free-Market Libertarian spaces - an ideology that took the hatred of the American Nazi movement, but removed the desire for a strong government). “Pan-Leftism” can, effectively, function as a pipeline for young people to have their valid anger distorted against them, pushing them back into supporting the system that created the things they radicalized into the left in the first place.

You can not convince these people to read Marx unless they choose to, because these spaces are filled with people telling them to read anti-Marxists, or worse telling them that reading is “ableist” and therefore not something they should do. You can not convert from Pan-Leftist spaces, at best you can only hope to find people who want to know about the things those spaces refuse to talk about honestly, and help them radicalize.

Poland claimed the US told them it was a cruise missile, but according to a twitter post the US has denied this

The remains of the explosion don’t line up, at all, with the pattern left by a cruise missile. Rather it looks much more like a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile, which have crash-landed in Poland before during the course of this war - mind you they’re being used by Ukraine, not Russia (who prefers to use more sophisticated means for taking down Ukrainian aircraft)

What seems to be happening is a conservative Polish tabloid has baselessly accused Russia of targetting a civilian target in Poland, and NATO-aligned news sources have ran with the story. This isn’t unlike DailyMail claiming Covid started in China because “evil yellow man eat bat”

I looked them up and scrolled their channel, most of their content is far from family friendly and they’re friends with Pewdiepie. So this is exactly the kind of behaviour I’d expect, just a white man on the internet.

There are a few means of distorting your voice for anonymity, but a sophisticated enough algorithm can reverse anything you try. The most secure thing you can do is to blend things, pitch your voice, add audio distortion, use multiple samples, shift accents / cadences / ways of speaking, change modulation at random points in the audio, etc. If you’re trying to evade the government they will eventually figure it all out, but your average schmuck will probably never get a fully clean audio out.

I use Davinci Resolve. It’s free and just about as good as Adobe Premiere.

the radio in the store my gf works in plays war updates every hour on the hour. Also every time I ask alexa for news from Russia it tells me about Ukraine.

it seems most discussion on it has died down a little on MSM, but they’re still talking about it and the liberals still haven’t fully shut up about it.

my gf and I have started hate-watching Mr. Beat. His videos on US presidents are somewhat good, everything else is liberal bullshit.

libs be like “I support Ukraine because I care about the well-being and security of Ukrainian citizens” then they don’t say dip about this shit

seared salmon with alfredo.

Literally, nothing is better to me than that.

My second favourite, for whatever odd reason, is white rice with brown gravy with tilapia. My mom would make it for me when I was a kid. Now that I’m an adult and I know how to cook (my mom was a garbage cook) I make it a hell of a lot better. But all around it just gives me so much nostalgia.

I reported anti-semitism & transphobia the other day and the 'book didn’t think it went against their standards.

but I got a 30-day ban for having a picture with a hamsic in it?

“sorry about how you’ve been disenfranchised for longer than the US has existed, but it’s time to post in all caps about the mistreatment of Ukrainians in Poland.”

apparently its founder was outed as a Nazi

https://www.rt.com/russia/564730-nafo-founder-nazi-posts/

looks like this’ll be the next revenue stream for the warmachine.

From what I understand it’s the .ml. Facebook assumes it’s a spam link and blocks it. If you break it up (lemmygrad .ml) it shouldn’t block it.

Since the 90s NATO’s doctrine has become increasingly focused on counter-insurgency, favouring decentralization of military leadership, weapons and technologies that favour attacking cells rather than fronts, etc.

This explains NATO’s complete failure to get a win in Ukraine.

NATO is in the process of retooling to better meet the challenge of Russia and China, this is most evident in the US and the UK. And of those two, it’s far more evident in the former. If Russia had waited just another year or two the war in Ukraine would be going differently.

Though we also have to mention, prolonged states of war are highly profitable to the military-industrial complex. 20 years of Afghanistan made a small handful of people billions of dollars, they like when conflicts get drawn out. The longer a military needs to be supplied, the longer the warmongers get paid. If all of NATO’s conflicts ended today, the entire military industry would collapse under its own weight.

The genocide of Palestine can’t and won’t end until the MIC is dismantled, the same is/was true of the genocide in the Donbas and of the war on terror.

Military spending being so high isn’t for the production of weapons, it’s so oligarchs can get paid.

this gives “i’m 16 and this is funny” vibes

this meme looks like it makes fun of people who refuse to accept that the Nazis couldn’t win. At least the caption implies as much.