SMO is Special Military Operation, which is what the war is called by Russia. This is partially a reflection of Russian military law (peacetime units have all the stuff but not all the infantry, and the ability to mobilize roughly scales with the threat) and jokingly pushing back on the media always saying “full scale invasion”. In real life, i say “the Russian intervention in the Ukrainian Civil War” as often as i can.

Do the Nazis have a plan? Probably not a good one. That said, the negotiator in Istanbul was associated with the Zelensky government, and he was assassinated by Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Could they actually get the President? Maybe not, but at this point the Nazi militias have been integrated into the security services, so they might have inside information.

Way back in 2022, the official case for war included demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine. Prior to the war, Ukraine had the second largest armed forces in Europe (after Russia), with over 500,000 men in the field. NATO/ the West is light on infantry and heavy on planes, spies, and bombs. Ukraine is only an attractive partner to the West when they have a large army.

For a decade up to the war, ethnic tensions in Ukraine were rising with CIA backing, and it explicitly targeted Russian speakers. The reality on the ground is that two provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, formerly of Ukraine, are mostly Russian speaking. The language was banned in school and then in public, and there was regular artillery shelling of civilian centers. The Azov and other militias built up their influence there, not during this war. It’s less about Russia having a plan for after the war, and more that the security threat of Ukraine comes from how influential violently anti-Russian neo-Nazis are within the state. Ukraine is only an attractive partner to the West when they are ideologically anti-Russian.

Russia has tried several Nazi militia members taken as prisoners of war. i think they intend to kill or imprison as many as they can get, purely because it’s a material threat to their state. If the Ukrainian military is defeated and neo-Nazi hierarchy remains, NATO will support Ukrainian veterans becoming a decades-long terror threat

It’s incredibly disheartening to say, but the fact of the matter is that no state of the world is permanent. Every moment of history has its massacre, and there are people with morality and clear eyes capable of calling it out. Vastly more will try and write their memoirs as tragically sympathetic but incapable. Still more will pretend it didn’t happen. Much like how communist parties were able to bring about the last famines of Russia and China, we hope to see the last of these massacres.

The rest of the world/ “West” doesn’t necessarily hate Palestinians specifically (though they clearly don’t view them as human). Rather, climate change means we will see one billion people dead by 2035 (i am not a scientist, but this is my prediction). Climate change will induce natural disasters and reductions in agricultural land. This will directly kill a relatively small number of people. Far more will become climate refugees, and many of them will flee towards the “West”.

The “West” wants Palestine to be the blueprint for concrete slum-hells, full of constant surveillance, starvation, and bombardment. They can then construct them along the southern edge of their area of influence to funnel climate refugees into. They also want a blueprint for unpersoning millions of people in the eyes of Joe Public. This will let them wash their hands of confronting any of the moral and practical crimes of unfettered capitalism and imperialism.

The “optimistic” take is that the above paragraph will objectively never come to pass. There is a point where people will snap back, and there is such a thing as too many people for high tech surveillance, and there is such a thing as too few concentration camp guards. Even if we have to watch as demons in human skin kill one billion of our comrades and siblings, the world will not end. There will be moments of joy and bird song and good food. There will also be roughly seven billion people left on Earth, and one billion people to avenge.

Our goal as socialists and communists, and i would say as humans, is to try and stop all that shit. If we can’t stop all of it, or even any of it, our goal is to prevent it happening again. Imperialism is self-defeating, capitalism will ultimately lead itself into crisis after crisis until it is destroyed, and there will need to be cockroach communists to try and provide mutual aid in the ashes. The fate of Cassandra was to have knowledge of future events while being unable to impact them. Cassandra did not have 150 years of theory and praxis from people trying to predict the future and change it.

Sorry if this is too long, but i agree with your outrage and i’ve been thinking about how to respond for a few days.

they also explicitly added decisions to sell uranium to the highest bidder and focuses that sell Congolese gold and diamonds to fund Belgian reconstruction. both of these things are portrayed as buffs/ positive for the Congo. they also added the ability for Belgium to alter their colonial policy up to annexing and coring the Congo in a few months, ez pz. every single focus tree they add outside of the main area of WW2 is just creating save bloat, and of course paradox has to create racist and historically illiterate save bloat. don’t even get me started on what they did to rosa in this new dlc

i found an article mentioning thermobaric Shaheds from December 2023. The source is pretty mediocre. i also found this article from yesterday, which has some good technical information. Apparently, the factory that makes this particular warhead was hacked, so there’s a lot of information about what it can do.

In war reporting, i think thermobaric explosions or fuel-air explosions are often brought up to sound bad. It brings to mind terrorism and a cruel-seeming death. When the USA uses them though, they are precision weapons on account of the fact that a rapidly expanding explosion is more devastating to bunkers and fortifications than open air (it still obliterates things in the open air). As Russia moves through the last defensive lines from before 2022, i would expect them to use and need fewer anti-fortification strike tools.

Chevron has been developing a methodology for pushing back on attempts to regulate it. In 2022, they (and Aera, another oil company) spent $8 million to defeat a county measure. Ventura County has roughly 500,000 registered voters (for roughly 850,000 residents). That is, generously assuming that all those people voted, oil companies spent $16 per voter and achieved the desired result. Compare that to the cost of having to rip out and replace on shore and off shore oil rigs in order to comply with environmental regulations.

Their main innovation in methods for dealing with voters is relentless test messaging. They did not use the mass texts and form letters ‘from’ the candidate or the party, as we see even the current presidential candidate do. Instead, they made up five characters, hypothetical locals who would have their jobs and bills impacted negatively. i think most residents ended up getting messages ‘from’ two or three of them. To someone used to political texts or following events, not much of a change. But to someone used to skimming over or ignoring a form letter that’s way too long for a text message, there was a tighter emotional core. Go marketing! They also tried a nonsense television campaign about foreign oil leading to higher electricity prices (that’s not how California makes power).

i don’t know what Chevron might do differently for influencing assembly people, but the last time they tried to influence the law they got exactly what they wanted and didn’t get punished. Probably comes down to whether Caesar Newsom wants it or not. God help us all

the russians did not deploy enough troops to ever seize or siege a large population center in northern Ukraine. back of the envelope occupation math suggests 1 soldier for every 1000 civilians. the russians did not deploy that many troops on the entire Ukrainian front. big serge (my milblog goat) goes into more detail here

i’m not a morocco expert, but that article reminded me of an article naked capitalism posted earlier this month. phosphate mining is critically important as a material industry for morocco. morocco has been engaged in ongoing warfare with and colonization of the western sahara and the sahrawi since 1975. the current king of morocco is the son of the king that started the invasions of the western sahara. one policy of USamerica during “competition” with china for critical resources is securing friendly governments over resources, like the bolivian coup. while that ultimately did not work in bolivia, the broad policy of authoritarian but compliant governments controlling resources is a US trick as old as time.

phosphate will always be relevant for mining and export for fertilizer. what’s interesting to me as armchair people’s secretary for electrification is how much longer phosphate will be relevant in modern batteries. lithium iron phosphate batteries are advantageous, especially for vehicle and utility applications, because iron and phosphate are cheap/ relatively abundant. lithium is not and never will be. there are a number of promising alternatives, both at an academic research level and in different manufacturers’ test cars. as soon as it is industrially viable to switch to nickel batteries or one of the more esoteric other options, everyone will do so. when that happens, the idea of phosphate as a critical material might no longer hold water. i’m sure morocco will be happy anyways to take land they’ve been after for fifty years, but it seems like if that happens it would sour relations with algeria. i’m sure one of our comrades from algeria could say much more about that.

the oldest possible zoomer was roughly 10 for ‘Hope’ round 1. some people have to touch the stove before they know it’s hot. the optimistic takeaway is that there are a lot more leftist resources compared to 15 years ago for them to turn to when kopmala doesn’t actually make policy based on taco jokes

the utilities are squeezing people while they’re still allowed to. after the camp fire (the one that the power company caused and then killed 90 people a few years back in northern california), the state legislature has passed several laws about power companies and wildfires. one of them mandates that utilities offer a flat rate based on income, with the highest tier being $85 a month for households that make more than $180,000 a year. for pretty much everyone, even people with full solar, this will mean the power bill goes down. the plan is still moving through bureaucracy, and it’s scheduled to start in early 2025 (fingers crossed). so long as our power and gas come from organizations with executive boards and benefits packages, they’re going to rip the copper wire out of the wall until their business model collapses.

i agree with your position on deng and the current ‘frog boiling’. i think a major factor that will determine how that happens is china’s entanglement with the USamerican economy. while china is reducing its ownership of us debt, it still owns a lot. this means they are deeply invested in the US’ ability to make interest payments. the US can never stop servicing that debt, or else everyone in the world would panic and drop everything connected to the dollar. aadditionally, my understanding of china’s central banking policy is that they cannot force a financial economy to develop, so until that happens organically they are reliant on the west. the financial options the west offers are everything from bonds and other securities designed to absorb excess cash and return a profit to unique corporate structures that allow companies to headquarter different branches in different countries for maximum benefit. that’s the one hand.

on the other, it’s been more than ten years since the tpp and obama’s pivot to asia. in the eye of some warhawks, just as soon as the US can get out of SWANA, they’re going to be right at war in the indo-pacific. if the US continues its hot and cold attitude, then i’d guess china will maintain its current pace of reforms. if the US is humiliated in some major way, then Xi might be able to pull out the big red button at will. i don’t see a path to real aggression against china, but i think major surface fleets are defunct and that china has an overwhelming material edge in a conflict with the US that lasts longer than four days. those in charge of the boats and planes are cut from a different cloth, so they might try and do it. i think the two types of “war” against china that are on the table are either jumping from a broader middle eastern conflict to cut off oil shipments through the persian gulf and the strait of malacca, or boosting the phillipines into a south china sea provocation that calls in the whole regional gang. in the event that we are not all burned away in nuclear fire or its consequences, this ‘proxy’ war could allow china to nationalize industry for the war effort.

no matter what, i think the current pace of reforms is irreversible. there are changes in the world that could cause an acceleration of the reforms, but i can’t imagine how they’d be reversed. the material conditions of people in the urban areas of china that i know are getting to the be the best capitalism can give to a society. if capitalist development is no longer benefiting the people in china, then the communist party will phase them out. the fact the USamerican empire is sprawling outwards in a deathspasm at the same time is either happy coincidence or further proof of the immortal science.

the recent NATO summit asserted that Ukrainian membership was inevitable. i believe they added the caveat that they would only get in once they were not under threat. while he is a problematic favorite, i think simplicius has rightly articulated that putin wants a brand new/ re-defined security architecture, in europe if not the world, in order to get peace in the Ukraine. the west has lied too many times for anything else. so there can’t be a real peace with the current version of NATO policy.

i think it turns on who is it that you think is speaking there when NATO says ukrainian membership is inevitable. if it’s Joe Biden/ Bidenist Americans, then he’s toast in 6 months, and you can keep up the current level of pressure on the hopes of a better negotiation with a new president (winner doesn’t really matter). if it’s the European Council or NATO/ US military speaking here, then either they or their public facing statements are delusional, and russia has every incentive to maintain the slow and steady screw turning until they realize. never interrupt your enemy while making a mistake and all that.

i agree that your description is the inevitable outcome of the actual war in ukraine, but you and i have known most of that since 2022. i think the slow war/ fast war thing has an impact on how involved NATO is in the conflict, not the actual military result against the UA. if you go too fast, then NATO goes nuclear (bad) or sees it as a lost cause and stops sending free equipment to burn (bad). i’d be happy to be proven wrong by either someone else or reality, but i don’t see any benefit to accelerating the war. more dead russians, minimal change in western posture (they’ve been rattling sabres at defcon 1 for 2.5 years), and possible nuclear conflict in exchange for potentially fewer dead ukrainians is not a good deal, cruel as it might be.

i think if anything graham’s comments give us some insight into different factions within the US mono-party. vicky nuland spent a decade trying to make this war happen out of sheer love of the game (belief in the necessity and possibility of beating russia on the battlefield). when she got replaced, but the war didn’t end, it’s obvious there’s at least one other school of thought in the democrat camp. looks like some republicans are also interested in ukraine, even though the two parties just pretended to fight about war aid. the mineral resources in question are predominantly coal and natural gas, and both chevron and shell were on track to begin exploitation before the SMO. it’s not so much saying the quiet part out loud, but saying one of several. the US famously feels no obligation to discuss its intentions, and also famously has a dozen different groups trying to grab the policy lever. so it says something about what a shit show ukraine is that not only is the squabbling open to the public, two different interest groups have had to put their cards out on the table. obviously admitting stuff won’t change anything, but i think it’s a source of some optimism that the US war and foreign policy machines are running less and less smoothly