RollaD20 [comrade/them, any]

The people who defend the Romanovs fucking disgust me. I was ‘friends’ with another russian jew who went to bat for them because of the fucking movie Anastasia. Both their and my families were being slaughtered in state-sanctioned pogroms… how the hell do you get to that fucking point? Even at my most liberal, I always believed the Romanovs deserved everything they got. Every single time someone brings it up I just list the horrific conditions that thrived under the Romanovs making them feel as terrible as possible.

I get not wanting to relish in the death of oppressors, personally I believe an unceremonious is more than sufficient. But defending them???

Seems mostly like cope and a misunderstanding of the BRI project. The cope seems to primarily be a pivot for the ‘debt trap diplomacy’ narrative that has increasingly eroded. While there have been setbacks (many of which have likely been ignited by imperialist influence), the primary problem this guy is looking at as for their purported failing is the concept that China has been making a lot of ‘bad loans’ aka non-profitable loans, and China has been bailing out countries who have taken loans from them and are unable to pay them back, largely due to the recent economic downturn. My primary response to this is that while China would probably prefer that all of their loans had good returns and both parties benefited from the trade, the BRI is part of a broader diplomatic program from China, and they make these bailouts & loans in order to elevate their international presence as both trusted trade partner (in stark contrast to the USA) and diplomatic peacekeeper (see the recent Iran/Saudia talks for an example). Is it possible that these bad loans might cause a shift in policy regarding Loans in the BRI? Sure, however, it’s rather early to say that it’s failing, lol. It is much more likely for one to see policy change as conditions change, and that is only if these loans are seen to be a significant issue by the PRC and not part of the operating cost of the initiative.

Yes an extremely weak argument. Arguably not an argument. It’s one of those emotional truths that seem to just be accepted as fact nowadays.

My inherited experience is one of living in Ukraine in the Pale. Being victims of pogroms and extreme violence in the russian empire until the soviets came to power and afforded my family opportunities that they couldn’t have possibly dreamed of whilst living in extreme poverty in the Shtetl. Then having to deal with a bunch of nazis and nazi collaborator fucks for decades. That’s only on one side of my family which was lucky, by the way. The other side had huge portions killed because of said nazi collaborators. So who’s inherited experience is more valid?

I think my least favorite aspect of this is being told it is in fact I, the anti-zionist jew, who is the antisemite and self-hating jew because I don’t want to support zionist genocide. just makes me see red. I don’t know how they justify it to themselves.

Propaganda from Russia

BBC Newsnight - Neo-Nazi threat in new Ukraine (2014)

VICE News - Under Fire with the Azov Battalion (2014)

The Guardian - Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp (2017)

NBC News - Ukraine’s Hyper-Nationalist Military Summer Camp for Kids (2017)

DW Documentary - Women and the Azov battalion in Kyiv, Ukraine (2017)

BBC Newsnight - Ukraine: On patrol with the far-right National Militia (2018)

Associated Press - Nationalist camp in Ukraine trains kids to kill (2018)

TIME - Inside A White Supremacist Militia in Ukraine (2021)

VICE - Why the Far Right Joined the 2013-14 Ukraine Crisis (2021)

I’m sure that someone else might have a better answer but likely bullshit. This was sort of the bombshell article on it. Theodore Postol is a leading expert on these sort of weapons systems, and he makes arguments that haven’t been meaningfully disputed from what I’ve read.

If you’re having trouble commenting this should help

You do not have a morally superior position because you personally feel scared by one of the two sides of the increasingly fascistic coin of american politics. I’d argue that dismissing the immense suffering of huge swathes of the world let alone the USA in exchange for personal security is an immensely selfish (at minimum amoral) stance. Especially when that security is built on a house of cards that can be taken away at any moment when the Democrats find it “politically inconvenient” to support trans people.

Also, yes, lots of dems are intentionally cruel, so socialists support and organize with socialist/left parties. Wild that. The binary of Republican-Democrat is such an obviously bullshit creation; it’s incredible that in the year 2023 people are still browbeating people for not caring about presidential elections. It might be worthwhile to interrogate why you think that the mass amounts of violence that the Democrats support (often, in conjunction with the Republicans or as continuation of Republican policy) can be so readily dismissed.

If you think that voting in US Presidential Elections will make your country any better, and you are willing to ignore harm happening to the already hyper-exploited and oppressed populations of the world, then you are a misguided electoralist - a morally tenuous position at best.

Yeah a lot of houses will wear outside shoes inside. There is a decent number of people who don’t do shoes in the house, though.

“As the committee has learned, when you scrutinise and follow the billions of US investor dollars flowing to CCP-controlled Chinese enterprises, courtesy of reckless Wall Street firms, it leads to nowhere good in many instances,” he said.

That’s just the free market doing what it does! What are you? A bunch of commies? A bunch of commies trying to interfere with the invisible hand? Do you hate freedom?!?