> looking for a new source on China

> ask the liberal if their source is CIA or Zenz

> they don't understand

> pull out illustrated diagram explaining what is CIA and what is Zenz

> they laugh and say, "It's a good source sir"

> click the link

> its Zenz

man, getting more and more exposure to the libs on here, it's just...

I, too, once thought Castro was a dictator. I, too, once thought that China was a totalitarian hellscape in which people are governed by social credit scores. I, too, once thought that the DPRK was a so-called "hermit kingdom" of its own making with effectively hereditary monarchs. I, too, once thought that the Soviet Union was an abject failure, or at best a highly imperfect project that "proved" that communism cannot work in practice. I, too, thought that liberalism and civility and rational debate and compromise between differing political parties was the only way to really achieve anything, and that you must always take the high road even while your right-wing opposite takes dishonourable stabs at you. I believed that swathes of Africa and Asia were undeveloped - rather than underdeveloped - because of corruption, not exploitation. The war in Iraq might have been bad in retrospect and we shouldn't have gone in based on a lie, but somebody had to be the world police. That's obvious, right? The police are what keeps us safe!

These were all beliefs I had when I was young and sheltered from the world, when the hard edge of economic consequences hadn't yet really hit me. When those consequences and problems did hit me, I didn't have the classic experience of going from a dreamy liberal living in fantasies of equality to a hardened conservative who understood that things have to be unfair because that's just life. I realized, through personal experiences and also through exposure to ideas from the left, including some of the people on here, that most of what I knew about other countries and history was tainted with misinformation, or twisted beyond recognition, or just flatly not true. I wasn't brainwashed. I haven't been turned into an agent for a foreign government. I'm certainly not in an echo chamber - I'm literally surrounded by contrary ideas every day because other people play the radio or watch the television around me and expose me to the latest and greatest of liberal arguments for X and Y.

Others have expressed this point before, what strikes me about all the libs on here is that they seem totally unaware that the vast majority of us once held the exact same positions that they once did and have moved past them. That we might have been in their shoes. We all know the arguments, we've not only seen them, many of us were previously convinced by them.

Rule of thumb for all hexbearian comrades: You see a hexbear post, you upvote it because you like it! Get it to the top of the lemmyverse charts so everyone can appreciate our big beautiful posters!

I'd like to thank federation for reminding me that liberalism is a festering husk kept afloat solely by the collection of literal compound interest on 500 years of genocidal plunder.

The liberal mind is where critical thinking skills go to lay down and die. Lemmy and the anglosphere writ large is a space of pure mental atrophy where you can see reflected the decline of the Western bloc in real time. No one left to fill critical roles, every administrative organ just exposed to open air, infected and dying.

Colonisers were never supposed to believe the words they were saying.

I like to imagine people stomping in here from the fucking 900 comment thread going on right now, taking off their blood-stained helmets, laying down their gore-dipped swords against the wall, taking off their ragged armor

this really has be the funniest week on this site in a while, federation was a great idea. just imagining the typical reddit liberal who has experienced no pushback whatsoever on any take on China or Taiwan or Russia for years and getting ready to bask in the upvotes again by saying "China bad, everybody is a slave" and then being attacked by a hive of hornets

the communists remaining on lemmy trying to keep the liberals out like at Helm's Deep and then Hexbear arrives. "at dawn, look to the east."

The offensive failed

So it's time for peace talks then?

It's time for peace talks, right?

I like how libs come from other instances to say this place is an echo chamber, when like half of our news stories in the socialist news mega come from the FT, WSJ, and other Western business press.

There's some unironic NAFO fella in one of the China threads. Bonus is they're from the Canadian instance lmao

It’s so funny how libs stumble in here peddling their tired bullshit that they’re used to getting absolutely zero pushback on and then going “I can’t believe the Hexbear fascists don’t Slava their Ukrainis, my word!” and running off to their home instance bitch and cry about it while their fellow cretins pat each other on the back for how brave they are for standing up to Hexbearian fascism and how they’re never wrong and always right

Extremely sad that I was able to find actual conscription/draft defenders in the year 2023. Liberals on the lemmyverse have gotten really scratched lately.

Imagine defending military conscription for the Ukraine war. Seriously. Absolute ghoul behaviour.

Lukashenko boots Wagner out of Belarus

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has reportedly kicked the Wagner PMC out of Belarus, after refusing to finance the Russian mercenaries.

Wagner forces left Russia for Belarus as part of a settlement deal brokered by Lukashenko following the armed mutiny on June 24 that saw Wagner’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin turn on his boss, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But reports have now emerged suggesting Lukashenko has refused to finance their stay in the country and the mercenaries are being "bussed" back to Russia for a “vacation.” According to the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, operations to remove all Wagner Group men began earlier in the month, with a second phase to remove the rest going into effect this weekend.

Wagner’s services don’t come cheap. Putin recently admitted that the Kremlin has spent around $1bn on the private military company last year, using state budget funds. Previously the Kremlin denied all knowledge of Wagner.

VChK-OGPU said the men headed for Russia are mercenaries that rejected re-assignment to Libya, where the Group has been operating for years.

"A source of the Cheka-OGPU said that after the meeting of PMC Wagner, everyone who did not sign up for a business trip to Libya was urgently sent on vacation to Russia,” VChK-OGPU posted on its channel. “Right now, mercenaries in Belarus are packing their bags and going back to Russia on vacation. At the same time, everyone was asked to stay in touch with PMCs, since at any moment a certain command from above could follow." Earlier Lukashenko said that the Wagner forces would be used to train the Belarusian army.

lmfao

"nah, actually, get out of my country, freeloaders!"

Also, meeting some Cuban communists in a few hours.

Ugh. When I was back on Reddit comments like those would always be downvoted to hell.

Just occurred to me that instability or armed conflict in Niger will also worsen the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean.

For all that western countries love to say they don't want people coming there, they sure love to create the conditions that force people to.

I believe in News Megathread supremacy

Found this on Twitter posted by an Ukraine flag account. And it’s actually perfect, it shows how they prefer victory at the cost of Ukrainian blood over a negotiated peace to save Ukrainian lives.

ECOWAS has activated its standby force with all its elements immediately to restore "constitutional order" in Niger. War is eminent.

I've also seen tweets like this claiming the Nigerien coupers will kill the neocolonial puppet of a president if ECOWAS sets foot into Niger, but this claim ultimately comes from anonymous US officials. I could not verify this claim that suspiciously gives justification for the invasion.

activity is popping off

It's pretty cool that people are calling anyone who wants an end to the Ukraine war "pro-genocide". What does victory look like to these people?

Hey add another dipshit Ukrainian government to the list, its like they can't help themselves openly saying just how much they want to do some cleansing holy shit.

"A Russian passport is as dangerous as a rocket." Fucking saying that unironically

Telegram

“We understand that obtaining a passport in itself is not a crime. But Russia is doing everything to go further for a passport. Steps that can then be qualified as signs of collaborationist activity. Now Russia, in September, plans to hold elections. That is why they are so hastily passportizing our people,” the official added.

When you deem anyone regardless of ethnic or cultural background trying to obtain a passport a "collaborator".

Go fucking die you dipshit libs that openly support this openly fash shit.

Financial Times: Is Britain really as poor as Mississippi?

https://archive.ph/ZJp4m

It was almost nine years ago to the day when the question of where Britain would rank among the US states for economic heft first became “a thing”. In an article for the Spectator, Fraser Nelson calculated that on a gross domestic product per capita basis, and after adjusting for price differences, the UK would sit in 49th place out of the 50 US states, narrowly squeezing in ahead of Mississippi.

As Britain’s economy has half slumbered, half stumbled its way through the nine years since, pausing to commit occasional acts of egregious self-sabotage, the Mississippi Question has only grown more popular. Could this be the year the UK economy is surpassed by that of the US state with America’s highest poverty rate and a life expectancy almost 10 years shorter than Britain’s?

For a fleeting moment recently, it looked like the time had come, but this was due to an erroneous comparison of nominal figures for Mississippi with inflation-adjusted numbers for the UK.

So no, the short answer is that to date, Britain remains free of that one particular ignominy. GDP per capita has remained ahead of Mississippi’s by about 15 per cent over the past two decades, and indeed as recently as 2019 the UK ranked ahead of no fewer than six of America’s poorest and most economically anaemic states. Heady days, indeed.

No, the UK isn't as poor as Mississippi.

It's a poor as Alabama. Big difference!

But the focus on one comparison, and one surface-level statistic, masks more interesting — and no less troubling — trends beneath the surface. If we’re going to compare Britain to each of the US states individually, then why not also look at the UK’s constituent parts?

It will surprise nobody that London accounts for an outsized share of Britain’s output, but the magnitude of the UK’s economic monopolarity is remarkable. Removing London’s output and headcount would shave 14 per cent off British living standards, precisely enough to slip behind the last of the US states. Britain in the aggregate may not be as poor as Mississippi, but absent its outlier capital it would be.

Sorry, correction. If you remove the money laundering capital of the world, the UK is in fact as poor as Mississippi.

By comparison, amputating Amsterdam from the Netherlands would shave off 5 per cent, and removing Germany’s most productive city (Munich) would only shave off 1 per cent. Most strikingly, for all of San Francisco’s opulent output, if the whole of the bay area from the Golden Gate to Cupertino seceded tomorrow, US GDP per capita would only dip by 4 per cent.

And the chart they put together:

Britons have mixed feelings about London. It’s the home of the metropolitan elite and sometimes seems more at home with New York than Newcastle, but it keeps Britain economically afloat. Not only in terms of the goods and services it produces but also in its higher tax revenues and fiscal transfers to poorer parts of the country.

As it turns out, letting a psychotic gammon deindustrialize your country so she can one up Reagan was not smart.

There were fears that the capital would suffer more from Brexit than most regions, but thus far the opposite has been true. Exports of services have held up relatively well while trade in goods has cratered, and London’s economy is 4 per cent larger today than it was in 2019, bucking the broader national trend of stagnation or decline. London is the only one of the 10 regions in England and Wales to have grown in every quarter since the nadir of the pandemic recession in the second quarter of 2020, while three others — including the South East — have dipped into regional recessions in the past 12 months.

Money laundering is even easier now that we don't have the EU regulating us!

This is not to say the capital is in rude health — its status as the pre-eminent global financial hub is slipping away, and its productivity growth has been lagging behind that of the rest of the country for the past 15 years — but merely to highlight the double-edged sword Britain has ended up with.

Its capital is the one thing keeping the UK hanging on in the upper economic echelons, but the decades-long London-centricism of everything from finance and culture to politics has engendered a reluctance to allow any other part of the country to be an agent in its own destiny in the way that London has been.

If Britain is to one day banish the Mississippi Question and return to upward mobility, it will require more than one economic engine.

LOL good luck!

Zelenskyy advisor says Ukraine "optimistic" about counteroffensive

When you’ve been afraid of the Russian army for 20 years, saying it’s the world’s second army, then expect that it can be destroyed in a matter of days. That seems a little strange to us. In reality, this war will take some time.

my brother in christ, you were the ones talking about being in Crimea by the summer

HOW IS LEMMY.ML SO LIB NOW

The tanks must roll, my return is nigh

Lathe: North Korea is mobilizing because it is about to send troops to Ukraine in exchange for Russian grain and expects an American response. The force will just be 10k tops, replacing Wagner. America will respond with massive cyber attacks,sabotage Forest fires and a reboot of that videogame in which totally not China super Korea took over America.

That or they will attack the DMZ when Japan decides to reinforce Taiwan, at which point we’ll have about two hours before the end of all things.

When things are going well

Ukraine to fire all regional military recruitment chiefs

Ukraine has faced recruitment challenges as the war with Russia nears the 18-month mark and the military is occasionally hit by scandals revealing graft or heavy-handed recruitment tactics.

I guess you could describe kidnapping as a "heavy-handed recruitment tactic"

Question for the libs: which part of an offensive is it when you start marching backwards? Ukraine order evacuation of towns in path of Russian advances

Guy who's convinced that the real counteroffensive will start any day now

1k+ comments are now the norm.

so the China economy thread is the new China airspace thread huh

My favorite genre of post is the one that comes up every 2 hours about how we’re being too mean to the libs

Reminds me of the old sub where we had to “accommodate YangGang”. They called us authoritarian tankies then and every time we’ve tried “outreach” (peak taking online stuff too seriously). The only way to keep the liberals is to cater to their views, like lemmy.ml did. Before you know it they’ll bring along their lib friends and by month’s end they’ll be running the whole show. This has happened every time a leftist group has let liberals run unchecked.

Liberals must be confronted at each and every turn unless the decision has been made to sacrifice any semblance of an ideological stance in the name of being a big tent party that preaches the holy virtue of voting blue no matter who.

But surely this time will be different!

Polish TV said a few minutes ago the government will be deploying 10k troops on the border with Belarus. This is paired with accusations that there's Wagner camps massing on the Polish border there and that Germany is doing Putler's bidding and attempting to rig the Polish election because a CSU politician said some unflattering stuff about PiS.

Also it showed racist propaganda about how western europe has fallen to roaming gangs of black people, attacking events and doing all kinds of evil.

Meanwhile, the libs are doing their usual Poland is bankrupt and literally 1984 shtick, while calling for stuff like abolishing or massively scaling back all welfare state things the fash government created (which is keeping them popular).

This place is a fever dream and it drives me mad. It's like it's specifically designed to torture all my political sensitivities.

Another boat carrying refugees and migrating people has capsized in the channel between the UK and France. Six people are dead, with two more missing.

This brings the number of unnatural deaths of migrating people to just under 3500 this year, so far. For context, that's about 500 more than were killed on 9/11 and the count may well double before the end of thr year.

The Economist: Expensive Energy Might Have Killed More Europeans Than COVID-19 Last Winter

Their number is 68,000 people, due to increased energy costs since interruption of energy trade with Russia and sanctions and also colder temperatures. 68k of pretty much people who couldn't afford new energy prices, that is, poor people. Now I remember debating with friends some time ago about the war, and how badly is it going for Russia because one of their T-90M tanks was captured intact by the Ukrainian Army or their abandoned equipment was being towed by tractors, like in the meme! Sure, Russia is indeed paying a big cost in this war, not only in manpower but also economically. But so is Europe, and while a country like Germany pays nothing but crazy volunteers in terms of manpower, they'll have to pay the social, political and economical costs of the war. In their case, energy costs will increase wich puts a burden in average germans, at the same time, the Bundeswehr is seeing a rearmament process, and who's going to pay for the new contracts, the bourgeoisie?

They're in a big gamble right now, and the future is uncertain. Europe is not in a comfortable position, climate change is increasing in severity (several parts of Europe saw a pretty scary heat wave, like Spain), the war in Ukraine has no end in sight, ties with Russia are completely severed, Nordstream was blown up and nobody knows who did it (we do, but we don't tell), the world is shaping up to be at least a bipolar one, and has Europe noticed they have a leash that leads to the United States? Problems like people dying because they can't afford new energy costs are social problems, they lead to protests, and you don't want people out in the streets smashing shit up because they can't tolerate their situation no more.. Social tension is indeed bad.

How will US-EU relations evolve over time? That I don't know, but I'm sure part of the EU (and the British) leadership are considering their status right now as a mere US vassal.

Well, shit. They killed Fernando Villavicencio, a liberal politician and presidential candidate in Ecuador, literally a day after I posted about the election polls here. I doubt this will have a big effect on the election, but it shows how bad Ecuador is with the neoliberal government. The assassinations of politicians also happened during the 2023 municipal elections (the one where Lasso not only lost all the main cities to Correa's party and some liberals, but also his entire constitutional changes referendum).

Financial Times: Why isn’t everyone talking about Niger?

I don't really care about the content of the article, the answer is pretty obvious, I'm just pointing out that it's funny that this article is behind a paywall

edit: actually, having read it, it's even more unintentionally funny because they also don't really talk about the coup in Niger, they just discuss that everybody else isn't discussing it and what that means for us. introspecting about introspection.

In my protracted war with Forbes, yet again I stumble on shit that makes me mald. When the Russians use anything older than today it's a sign they're running out of everything and are about to regress to the Neolithic age but when the Ukrainians use something that was FUCKING INVENTED IN NINETEEN FIFTY-FUCKING-SEVEN THEY'RE SEEN AS CUNNING SCRAPPY UNDERDOGS THAT ARE BUT ONE SWIFT KICK TO THE FRONT DOOR AWAY FROM COLLAPSING THE WHOLE ROTTEN RUSSIAN EDIFICE

Previous mald sessions from forbes

https://hexbear.net/comment/3664822

Current mald session

https://archive.is/cPJX0

When a Russian or Ukrainian brigade is on the defensive, even temporarily, it will dig in. Literally. “The work of trenching machines and bulldozers will be supplemented with old-fashioned shovels to provide protection for men and equipment,” Lester Grau and Charles Bartles explained in their definitive The Russian Way of War.

THATS THE BASICS OF FUCKING MODERN WARFARE YOU FUCKING WAR COLLEGE CLOWNS! ARTILLERY WILL SHARE ITS LOVE WITH ANYONE NOT HIDING FROM IT!

https://truthout.org/articles/right-wing-troll-andy-ngo-loses-lawsuit-filed-against-portland-activists/

A jury in Portland, Oregon, ruled against conservative provocateur Andy Ngo this week in a civil lawsuit he filed three years ago against local activists over multiple allegations of assault, including an embarrassing incident in 2019 when Ngo was hit in the face with a milkshake during a far right rally and counterprotest.

The US can’t use its $110 million drone base in Niger

Dronies have it rough