Cunigulus [they/them]

Intense moralism combined with repressed nationalism. This same dynamic will lead to some switch flipping someday that turns them full-on literal Nazi.

I really disagree that support for Israel is just a straightforward extension of imperialist interests. It really is its own project that exerts outsized political influence even to the detriment of the imperialist project as a whole. The ambivalent attitude towards Israel by early post-war US governments demonstrates this. Truman and Eisenhower treated Israel on the basis of objective interests of the empire. US politicians in more recent times will sacrifice imperial interests to support Israel, and that is definitely due to their political influence and blackmail operations.

Peering deep into the TradCath rabbit hole and how they think Biden is some kind of satanist makes the secret Vatican agent Biden meme so much funnier.

Losing will be better for fundraising, that’s for sure.

Republicans don’t actually want to “solve” the “border issue”. They want cheap grey market labor for their buddies. They want illegal immigration (if it’s legal they can’t bully their immigrant workers with threats of deportation). This is one area where Republicans are like Democrats and completely ignore their base in practice, while paying lip service to the policies they want. Biden conceding to Republicans on the border does absolutely nothing for him, it’s baby-brained liberalism.

She killed her campaign and now has to return to the Wall

Germany would be a great place if it weren’t for all the Germans.

The west does have some industrial base, much of it very advanced. What we lack is the ability to expand and mobilize that to politically defined ends. The problem is especially bad when it comes to defense industry, where at least half of everything spent has to be grifted away and the interests of the oligopoly of weapons manufacturers supersede the strategic interests of empire, with everyone involved in procurement counting down the days until they can pad that military pension with a fat defense industry-sponsored sinecure. I expected this from the US, but I’ve been astonished to discover how thorough the rot is in Europe as well. If the strategic situation continues to deteriorate this will lead to political instability in the west, as the big bourgeoisie cries out for someone to discipline their class enough to wage war effectively.

There is so much potential for efficiencies if the state can subsidize and guide software development. It should really be treated as public infrastructure to be efficiently managed for the public good rather than a means for private monopolies to siphon as much rent as possible.

Forgot to mention that they were spotlighting the Pussy Riot people before they were even Pussy Riot. I remember something about an orgy in a museum.

They were edgy libertines who got sucked into the removed of 90’s Moscow. They loved Limonov’s writing and at the time the Nazbols just seemed edgy and absurdist. There were hints of them getting close to some powerful players in Russian politics too, who may have used them for political attacks on rivals. Ames even did a short stint with Russia Today after the eXile was shut down. I read them a lot in that period when I was an edgy libertarian teen and there was nothing ideologically leftist about them - there really still isn’t, except that they loathe the lies of empire and are deeply cynical about capitalism. It’s really more of a punk/journalistic ethos than anything ideological. Nazis seem like a big deal today, but ten or fifteen years ago they were a bad joke - I definitely don’t think the eXile people are closet right-wing extremists or anything (except for whatever happened with Taibbi). I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if it came out that they were working with the Russian government as some kind of propaganda operation, maybe at arms length. They jumped on Patreon pretty early, which would be an easy way to launder support. On the other hand they’ve had a habit over the years of getting in public tiffs with well-connected professional journalists and the worst that’s come out of it was them attacking Ames over his RT work and stories in the eXiled about him sleeping with Russian teenagers. Maybe they just are what they appear to be.

Having seen some Israeli military explicitly say as much I’m starting to worry this is building up to a total genocide of the Gazan population. Not a “push them into Sinai” scenario, but one where the entire population of the strip is kettled together against the sea in a small area and the IOF just wipes them out completely with airstrikes and artillery. That idea is definitely going around in the IOF. If European countries are getting wind of this talk and afraid it might actually happen, they’ve got to start backing off their support for Israel. Or maybe the prospect of them repeating in Raffa what they did in Gaza City is a little too much for them to stomach. IDK

This is What (bourgeois) Democracy Looks Like!

Why are they letting him run again? What does the inside of the White House look like that no one can convince him it’s not a good idea? Is Biden some kind of covert hard-ass who has his eunuch advisors scurrying around to avoid his wrath? Is someone else like Blinken really pulling the strings, forcing Biden to run knowing there’s no way he’d maintain his position if another Democrat had the authority to replace him? Just a clique of mid-wits who don’t like their odds should they be forced to take another spin 'round the revolving door?

Sometimes it’s less about what the right move is and more about what the move is that keeps the situation dire enough that no one has time to oust you for your incompetence.

I saw someone suggesting this was revenge for the border stuff, but that didn’t seem plausible to me. I’ve got to think there are better ways to pressure Abbot than pointing a gun at the head of the fossil fuel industry.

Never played Half-Life Uplink. Pretty good bonus content.

There’s a conspiracy angle on the Malaysian Air 370 that it was the US stealing or eliminating a team of Chinese engineers involved in chip design. Flew it to Diego Garcia and then dumped the plane.

If it’s true that they’re still a bit behind the cutting edge in lithography technology, then China is going to blow past the rest of the world in advanced semiconductors in the next 2-3 years. Wringing that kind of performance out of less precise lithography techniques means their chips will be better than western chips once they achieve parity in lithography technology, which will probably happen in the next 2-3 years. Before the end of the decade China is going to be decisively more technologically advanced than the US. It’s fucking over.