Give it some time. The German government is looking real shaky at the moment, might be the next we see fall.

Excellent analysis!

🤡 🌎

Typical socdem L

It's not "significantly lower" but it is lower. It is correct that when the MoD writes "losses" they are referring to the combined number of sanitary (wounded) and irretrievable (dead) losses. But we know from a lot of reporting that for Ukraine that ratio is not good, they are having significant trouble getting medical help to their frontline troops in time and often they just leave them there. So if you just take half of that number from the MoD you already have a reasonable estimate.

You assume that they systematically over-report but the truth is you don't know that, and for all we know there could be systematic under-reporting happening to an even greater degree. A lot of Russian commentators have suggested that the MoD really only reports what can be visually verified as a hit, but there is a lot that happens that can't be directly observed. There are a lot of spotter drones, but not everywhere and seldom for strikes in the rear on logistics and such. And as you say, all of this is before you include losses from non-combat related causes.

So far the MoD numbers have tended to be very reliable, or at least composed according to the best information available to them. Insofar as they have reported on Russian losses they have also tended to agree with the estimates of pro-western organizations like BBC's Mediazona which while biased at least try to have a somewhat decent methodology.

So yes, take any numbers that the MoD puts out with a grain of salt, but at least they are not the inverse opposite of reality like in the case of the nonsense that Ukraine claims.

Yeah I can't open Telegram links either, and i'm also not going to install it. OP should find another way way to link whatever it is they are trying to share.

With that out of the way, this might upset some people but i'm going to go off on a bit of a longer rant here about your last paragraph there.

I've never understood the obsession that a certain subsegment of US communists seem to have with this LaRouche person. I had never even heard of them before communists started accusing others in the anti-war space of associating with LaRouche. And frankly i don't understand what the fuss is about, the whole LaRouchite sect seem to me to be extremely irrelevant as a political force.

This "guilt by association" thing is getting a bit ridiculous. If you start to look at who is connected to who and just keep extending that chain you can eventually reach almost any arbitrary person. Isn't that what the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" meme was all about?

So what if some of their followers happen to be in the same spaces that communists and others who agree with our anti-war and anti-imperialist views are in? Why should we be so afraid of them? Are we saying that our arguments are somehow worse and less persuasive? Shouldn't we instead see that as an opportunity to court and poach away their supporters? If we isolate ourselves in ideologically pure bubbles where no association with anyone with different ideological leanings is tolerated then we are rejecting a large part of the working class. And we are surrendering that segment of the working class to reactionaries like the LaRouchites.

That is not a way to build a broad anti-war, anti-imperialist mass movement when that is exactly what should be a top priority for communists in the imperial core right now given the dangerous state of what is happening in the world and how the US empire might lash out in reaction to its rapid decline. People in the real world are diverse in their views, many of them are very propagandized and un-/miseducated, and we have to learn to work with that reality instead of holding out for the perfect but non-existent ideal proletariat that we may wish we had.

We just have to throw our hat in the ring and spread our own message, make our own world view known and try to convince them that Marxism-Leninism is objectively and demonstrably the correct way to view the world, and more than that, the best tool for achieving the kind of change in the world that the working class needs. And to do that we have to be willing to go where the people are, even if groups that we ideologically disagree with are also there.

I gotta believe there are better, less compromised voices than Ritter’s to promote.

This is absolutely true, which is why i for one have never promoted him. But there are also much better things to criticize him for than some real or imagined "LaRouche connection". One thing that is very obvious for instance is that he is an extremely jingoistic person, to an almost comical degree. He is the archetype of a gung-ho military ultra-patriot and he says a lot of very stupid things as a result of that.

Yet at the same time he does say some very sensible things when he isn't in that ridiculous American jingoism mode, and a lot of people in America (and other countries) take people like him seriously precisely because of his background. We should welcome serious anti-war, anti-imperialist voices, particularly if they can appeal to a different demographic that we as communists would not normally easily reach.

If you ask me what the litmus test should be for allying with someone in the context of a broad anti-war movement, there are really three criteria: opposition to the genocide in Palestine, opposition to the NATO proxy war on Russia, and opposition to the US drive to war with China. And Ritter, for all his numerous flaws ticks all those boxes.

Personally i don't like listening to him and i don't seek out content with him in it. For me he is, as Jiang Zemin would say, "too simple, sometimes naive", but i also won't judge people who do find what he has to say useful or interesting, or think that he can convince more people to join the anti-war, anti-genocide movement.

6.99 plus tax

All I've read is that he generally wasn't well liked by any group of the citizenry of Iran

I don't know where you've read that but i think you're about to find out that that was a lie when you see the size of the crowds that will come out to mourn him.

Edit: And as i predicted: "Millions of Iranians rallied across the country to pay their final respects to the late President Raisi."

Not yet. Fingers crossed. Inshallah.

The bourgeoisie are not a unified monolith. There are sharp contradictions between finance capital and industrial capital. Finance capital's extreme parasitism, self-destructiveness and tendency toward de-development poses a threat to industrial capital and creates inter-capitalist conflict. So i suppose it would be more accurate to say that finance capital does not control the state in state led economies.

Ah. I see. Yes that makes sense. Sorry, that flew completely over my head. These days the line between satire and reality is often blurry...

Of course what you say here is absolutely correct, but i just want to add one caveat:

EVs don't completely solve the emissions problem by themselves, you also need a green grid as well, and while China is working on achieving just that, the Europeans - in particular the Germans - are going full speed ahead in the opposite direction, dismantling nuclear power, replacing it with coal, and choosing LNG shipped across an entire ocean by heavily polluting tankers instead of pipeline gas from Russia which is transported much cleaner.