When people flee a poor capitalist country, they are economic migrants, not refugees from capitalism. When people flee a poor communist country, they’re fleeing communism.

Would be interesting to filter out the U.S. (and maybe other imperial powers) from the “world” line.

A big part of the reason no one has used nukes in any of the post-WWII conflicts is sheer dumb luck since the 50s there’s been a real threat of out-of-control escalation, if not complete global annihilation. You think twice about nuking someone if it means you’ll get nuked back.

If Israel nukes Syria or Iran, who would retaliate in kind? It’s a fundamentally different scenario than the Cold War, or the India-Pakistan situation, etc.

Shades of 2020

We need more people to take us seriously, they get taken seriously by default.

It’s like some sort of big cat, but made of something more fragile than flesh and blood

A second technical issue has hit the Hexbear

Where these wars happened anyway, they either weren’t between states (but civil wars or insurgencies instead), they were so lopsided in numerical or technological terms that they were over before they really began (e.g. Desert Storm) or they happened in Africa where it’s easy not to notice them for the rest of the world. There were a few exceptions, e.g. Iran-Iraq, but they don’t really change the general picture.

Some terrible history right here. Writes off a ton of “total war”-style conflicts (presumably the post-WWII phase of the Chinese Civil War, plus the entire Korean War, plus the independence struggle of Vietnam from 1945-1975) because… if they’re civil wars or insurgencies (extremely fuzzy categories to begin with) they don’t count? Doesn’t address a few peer conflicts between India and Pakistan that thankfully stopped soon after they began. Doesn’t address the wars Vietnam fought against China and Cambodia in the late 70s/early 80s. Writes off another whole category of lopsided wars that are still incredibly destructive, especially when you look at the effects of long-term destabilization (Yugoslavia and Libya come to mind). Handwaves Africa for no good reason, and recognizes a glaring example of exactly what they’re talking about (Iran-Iraq) but ignores it as an exception (it’s really not!). Doesn’t even think of comparing the damage done by industrialized warfare to mass killings in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Latin America.

Blaming Kiev for breaking some non-existent taboo against total war is a stretch, too. There are many times Kiev could have defused the situation (from 2014 all the way to the aborted ceasefire agreement soon after the war began), but fighting a whole-ass army the only way one can fight a whole-ass army is a response you’d expect from basically any country in Ukraine’s situation (it was a prerequisite to getting a deal as good as they had right after the start of the war, too).

This is a step in the right direction for this person, and losing people usually makes an organization’s work harder for those who remain. We want to support both of those things even if it’s also fair to ask questions like “what took so long?” or “why aren’t you doing more?” One might even call it critical support.

This is why the “look, this is just a shitposting forum!” defense of maximally hot takes has always rung hollow to me. Everyone spends a ton of time online these days, and if you say something all day every day online long enough, eventually at least a sliver of it is going to come out in real life. Maybe it’s in a conversation like this, maybe it’s after a beer or two.

I then decided to shoot my shot and ask her out for dinner.

she responded that she wouldn’t really have time and we should just hang out with the whole friend group instead

I’m having a really hard time interpreting this… Maybe proposing dinner was also too uncreative?

I see this as a very clear (and very polite) “no.”

The way I look at it is: if she was interested in going on a date with you, would she respond that way? An interested person who really was just temporarily busy would propose a better time, or a different activity, or they’d fit it in because it’s something they’re excited about. They’d work with you some. Someone who can’t find time and does not try to find a way to make it happen is not interested in making it happen. It’s no fun to hear.

or better yet Federalise the guard

It’s right there! With the built-in advantage of a Republican president last doing it, and the precedent being to integrate public schools! It’s a win across the board for libs with no downside!

I really can’t see the “Democrats are actually worse” argument when the two most relevant wars – Iraq and Afghanistan – were both started by Republicans, and when Republicans committed (not almost committed, not came close to committing) an act of war against Iran just a few years ago.

the current admin has probably gotten US closer to a war with Iran than it’s ever been

…under Trump, the U.S. assassinated an Iranian war hero on a diplomatic mission, then Iran attacked a U.S. base in retaliation. Those are real acts of war from both sides. Apparently further escalation was a matter of how long John Bolton could stay in the same room as Trump. You say neocons are gravitating towards Democrats; they’re actually right there in Republican administrations stoking the fire of an already active situation.

I agree 70-80% is the same. But that last chunk is significant – almost no lib will even admit the U.S. is an empire; meanwhile you have Eric Price openly calling for the U.S. to serve as an empire and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee saying “100 years in Iraq.”

Indeed, all of the major U.S. wars in the 20th century—World War I, II, Korea and Vietnam—were entered by Democratic administrations.

Some of this is factually questionable (the U.S. had “advisors” in Vietnam since 1955, under Eisenhower), much is more happenstance than a political choice (would a Republican administration have kept us out of WWII after Pearl Harbor?), and I don’t think comparing WWI (or even Vietnam) to 2024 and beyond is particularly useful. The framework for modern U.S. foreign policy is the War on Terror – it’s the justification for nearly every U.S. military action since 9/11 and the current rationale for maintaining the empire.

Democrats are imperialists too, of course, but since Vietnam they’ve avoided the type of boots-on-the-ground invasion/occupation that is most damaging to the country being attacked. Meanwhile Republicans nearly started a war with Iran (a country Democrats had been working with diplomatically) just a few years ago.

Dems are more likely to stir up geopolitical conflict

To the extent there’s a meaningful difference, I still think this leans Republican. We have essentially a bipartisan consensus on Ukraine and Israel, and the immediate start of those conflicts was not Biden ordering an attack on someone. On the other hand, you had Trump directly ordering acts of war on Iran what, two or three times? The U.S. also sponsored a coup in Bolivia and a Bay of Pigs-style invasion of Bolivia under him.

Rafah is considered to be the last stronghold of Hamas

By who? There’s a great argument that this war exposed Israel’s intelligence as sorely lacking, and they have a vested interest in declaring victory.

I was expecting this whole operation to result in the destruction or near-destruction of Israel

I think it’s far more likely we see a resolution closer to post-apartheid South Africa.

Kubuqi and its sister projects are well on track to have a generational capacity of 455 gigawatts(GW), 60% of which will be solar and the other 40% will be wind. That’s staggering — to put it into perspective, that’s more clean energy generation capacity than is currently available in any nation outside China. A system that large could almost cover India’s current energy needs by itself. 455 GW is equal to the combined green energy generation of the the United Kingdom, Australia and Indonesia, plus the total power capacity of Brazil.

These bases are all due to come online within the next year or two.

Meanwhile in the U.S., our one party that nominally recognizes the reality of climate change openly mocks discussion of remedies that match the scope of the problem.

The installation of bases like the one in Kubuqi has analysts, like those from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), all but guaranteeing that Chinese emissions and fossil fuel use will not only fall next year, but enter “into an extended period of structural decline.”

Lmao the first two results are Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, two even more overt U.S. propaganda outlets.

Anyone have any good reading on the end of the apartheid government in South Africa? That’s the closest parallel I see to Israel.