I would say that Saudi Arabia are the first as they have already begun the process of re-orientation. They are still trying to play both sides for the time being, but it's clear which way the wind is blowing. And i think the next to leave the US sphere of influence will be Turkey.

Another one to keep an eye on is Pakistan where it is quite likely that Imran Khan and his party could make a return to power despite the best efforts of the US puppet government and the military to neutralize him as a political force. And he may be even more inclined to align with Russia and China now.

I am more pessimistic about Japan and France. Japan is too occupied by the US to really have a choice, and France's political class is just too Atlanticist, plus they're in the EU which is another layer of US control that they would have to break before being free to realign.

China has a lot of land that isn't at all suitable for farming but extremely suitable for solar power. But yeah nuclear and hydro are great too and very much necessary.

Fair point. I guess we'll see. Approved candidates will be announced on June 11, i believe.

She is anyway unlikely to win even if her candidacy qualifies because there are already several other candidates in the race who are much more politically prominent, such as former president Ahmadinejad (though he may also not be approved, and i don't know how popular he was as a president anyway). But it would be a good precedent.

It didn't have a different meaning, this is not like the swastika which is an Asian symbol that was co-opted, this is a European symbol that always stood for one of the core ideals of fascism, even before fascism coalesced as an ideology. Stop trying to make false analogies or excuse the US's clear proto-fascist ideological underpinnings. It is no coincidence that the Nazis openly admitted to taking inspiration from the US in their genocidal, expansionist settler-colonialism.

That's a good point. And yet in western liberal democracies the bourgeois state has become increasingly unwilling or incapable of bringing the rest of the capitalist class to heel. Even traditionally social democratic Europe is becoming more and more neoliberal, while at the same time states in the global south that are trying to assert their independence from western neo-colonialism, as well as semi-peripheral states like Russia find themselves going in the opposite direction and rejecting neoliberalism in favor of a more state led model, if only for the purely pragmatic reason that they are finding that neoliberalism is not just a hindrance to their development but is actively anti-development. The western states that have embraced it have been de-industrializing and de-developing before our eyes.

And the fact that this phenomenon is happening in both bourgeois states like Russia and in proletarian ones like the AES states which had opened up and liberalized to a degree in the 80s and 90s illustrates a point that Marxist-Leninists who support China have been making for a while now: that socialism is not synonymous with economic planning nor capitalism with markets, but that these are merely economic tools that both proletarian and bourgeois states can use. At the end of the day, as you correctly point out, the real determinant of socialism vs capitalism is which class controls the state. And so far Russia is still very clearly a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

So yes, to sum up, you are right, however there is still something interesting happening in terms of the economic model that we are seeing have success and the one which is not.

This is an article in Global Times, a Chinese publication. This is not about China spying on the US but about the US spying on China.

Yeah, i think he was too arrogant for that. Like all of these sick scumbags he thought he was too powerful to fall. Turns out people even more powerful than him decided that he had become a liability.

Here are some more quotes from various Russian commentators and officials:

“This is exactly how the Maidan activists behaved in Kiev. Well, yes, the same methodology, the same puppeteers,” says blogger Yuri Podolyaka.

It has already become clear that the organizers of the riots were channels that are associated with the ex-State Duma deputy, white ribbon activist Ilya Ponomarev, who fled to Ukraine.

“The most active resource of the organizers of the pogrom is the telegram channel ‘Morning of Dagestan.’ It was organized by Ilya Ponomarev, a former State Duma deputy, and is now under the control of the SBU. Ponomarev even had an interview earlier on this topic. Other TsIPsO (Center for Information and Psychological Operations of Ukraine) resources are also very actively pushing Dagestanis toward Jewish pogroms.

The purpose with which Zelensky organized the Jewish pogrom in Dagestan was to show Russia as an anti-Semitic country, to glue Hamas and Russia together, to glue Israel and Ukraine together, and ensure that 100 billion US dollars go not to Israel alone, but to Israel and Ukraine in one package, as Biden wants,” explains political scientist Sergei Markov.

But his colleague Alexey Chadayev points to the Turkish trace.

“Colleagues who monitor the information field noted a fairly significant trend towards the growth of the Turkish media presence in Dagestan, primarily in television viewing and social networks. Well, think about how Erdogan’s rally at the airport looked through the eyes of the relevant audience, and the videos from there in chats and forums,” writes Chadayev.

One way or another, on the eve of Saturday it was Ponomarev’s “network” who managed to stage a provocation by throwing in information about Israelis staying in one of the hotels in Khasavyurt. A crowd also arrived there. However, those in charge were unable to stop the process, and on Sunday riots already engulfed the airports of Dagestan.

“It’s obvious that a provocation was being prepared (calls were made in public throughout the day), but was not stopped by the authorities, who, as if on purpose, did not notice the problem,” writes political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov, close to the New People party.

“Firstly, the federal airport could have been better protected. And secondly, in terms of image, for Russia as a country that declares the ideals of peaceful coexistence of all peoples and faiths, everything that is happening is a strong blow.

In principle, already in the morning, it was clear that something out of the ordinary was happening. It was quite possible to transfer police reinforcements to Makhachkala by lunchtime. However, they only realized it late in the evening,” notes political scientist Alexey Pilko.

And TV presenter Maxim Shevchenko believes that the emergency in Dagestan is a blow to Russia’s international image.

“What is happening in Dagestan is real chaos. Transferring blame and spreading hatred to an entire people (in this case anti-Semitism) is disgusting. It is unclear how the authorities of Dagestan allowed this to happen, despite the fact that information about this shameful action was disseminated in public pages all day long. Where are your crowds of Russian Guards?

Although there are a couple of unpleasant considerations about this, such pogroms benefit only Israel, Zionist propaganda, and the enemies of Russia. This action was organized specifically to show the Russian authorities, after the Hamas delegation arrived in Moscow, that it ‘does not control the Russian ummah,’” writes Shevchenko.

“There is another failure in the work of the ‘effective managers’ of the Administration Department, which is responsible for internal policy. Or, there is competent work of the 5th column in power,” comments St. Petersburg journalist Dmitry Borisenko.

“The unrest in Dagestan near the airport began last night when they were waiting for a flight from Israel, and there was time (almost a day) to both correctly disperse the crowd and turn the flight to another nearby airport. But for this you need to think,” points out columnist Yuri Baranchik.

And member of the Human Rights Council Marina Akhmedova draws attention to the behavior of the Dagestan police.

“At the Makhachkala airport, locals stopped a man, mistaking him for a Jew. They checked his passport. He turned out to be a resident of Smolensk, Tajik by nationality. What is surprising in this video is that the police behave very kindly. They probably support those who organize these extra-legal lynchings. And if the police continue to behave with the same “understanding”, and the head of the republic speaks out cautiously about misunderstandings, these lynchings will continue,” warns Akhmedova.

By the end of the day, the local muftiate condemned the rioters. Law enforcement officers began making arrests.

“Afterwards, all these countless young men must go to the SMO as volunteers. Otherwise, this model will be recognized as working, and in the foreseeable future there will be a Jewish pogrom in Moscow,” warns Alexei Zhivov, a volunteer helping the front.

Exactly. There is no lesser evil in the "duopoly" because there are not actually two parties, there is only one corporate uniparty, the party of fascism, war and imperialism. It simply wears two masks depending on which portion of the population it is attempting to deceive. The only lesser evil is to vote outside of that uniparty.

It actually does matter because it allows you to bypass missile defenses.

A reminder that Okinawa and the Ryukyu islands are very much still a colony under foreign occupation.