feedforward

> which they used to help establish friendly dictatorships across Eurasia, from East Germany, to China (simultaneously, the US put an arms embargo on the legitimate government who were fighting the communists)

How did Russia establish a friendly communist government in Hungary in 1919 when it had no troops there? Actually England armed the Romanians to overthrow the Hungarian communist government.

Of course, the US, England etc. invaded Russia and fought the Red Army during/after World War I with the Polar Bear expedition etc.

Stalin dissolved the Comintern during World War II, and the Communist Party USA dissolved as a political party as well at that time.

With Albania and Yugoslavia, Red Army troops passed quickly through a small corner of Yugoslavia and offered little help to Tito.

Insofar as China, the Soviet ambassador as far as I know was the only one who accompanied Chiang Kai Shek to Taiwan. Mao took China back from the Japanese with little help.

Greece probably would have become communist after World War II, but for the Truman doctrine and US involvement, Russia did not get involved at all.

Moscow's lack of support helped in the breaks in relations - with Yugoslavia, Albania and the Sino-Soviet split.

What you're saying is rather ahistorical.

The New York Times and Haaretz reported in the summer and autumn of last year (just prior to the current flareup), Netanyahu had sent the Mossad head to Qatar in order to convince them to send money to prop up the Hamas government in Gaza. As Netanyahu said publicly in 2012, he wanted Hamas strong and the Palestinian Authority and Fatah weak, as the PA was pursuing measures at the United Nations.

You're pointing the finger at the State of Palestine and "any Muslim country", when the real supporters of Hamas for years has been Israel and Netanyahu.

Very narrowly defined the DoD spent ~$750 billion in 2023 (over 800 billion). This doesn't count over $300 billion in veteran's benefits. Nor does it count Department of Energy military nuclear expenditures, nor tens of billions of military/intelligence spending in non DoD departments. Then when we look at the $800 billiom interest on the debt, a chunk of that is for unpaid military spending from last year and the years before.

This idea that military spending is not a large chunk of the budget is only when one has a very, very narrow definition of military spending.

Should point out the PM for Pakistan who spoke out about religious extremism, Imran Khan, was jailed after "Lettergate", the US's efforts to have him ousted as PM (which succeeded, he is in jail now). The crackdown on the Internet followed that.

So all of this is in line with US policy. The US instigated a coup to warp their democratic processes with foreign efforts, causing a chain of events for this to happen.

Dictatorship of the proletariat

Hey taxpayer! You don't like the estimated $1.5 trillion going to Lockheed Martin for their hunk of junk F35? Then you're just like Forbes, Bloomberg, the Washington Post and the other anti-American ChiComs who are saying all this because "they need it to be shit".

Your rant is almost as inspiring as the Palantir CEO's flag waving speeches where he rants against the anti-America crowd who question why their tax dollars are flowing to his company.

Lenin did pretty good with "Peace, Land, Bread"

Read about commodity fetishism, relations of production, alienation etc.

When the wealth created by those who work at the New York Times is sent out in dividends to those who do no work or create wealth there, what is performance of these rentiers?

You're arguing on the side of the rentiers and parasites who do not work, and lecturing about "low performance".

It's the people doing the work's purview to discuss performance, not the parasites.

> Striking during election week is kind of a crappy move to pull.

Yes, heaven forbid the people doing all the work and creating all the wealth actually use their leverage against the heirs collecting NYT dividends.

The redcoats left in the 18th century.

The Russuan military was, and has been, in the Crimea since before that.

> And it might start when they seize Taiwan like Russia Ukraine, how would we stop them in the slightest when we can't stop the seizure of Ukraine?

Russian troops were in the Crimea back when British redcoats were stationed in New York City, so I don't know exactly when this "seizure" of the Crimea by Russia is supposed to have happened.

Taiwan is Kinmen island, which sits inside the harbor of the city of Xiamen in mainland China. The PRC, the US and the Taipei government all recognize Taiwan and the mainland as the same country. So I don't know how or why "we" would try to stop the Standing Committee from going into Taiwan - the island in their own harbor.

Kind of a laugh to look at the shock of a "payoff' by Russia, when the US is doing bigger payoffs to countries all around the world.

> Adults often come to see small-scale solutions to major problems as childish. Yeah, you could make a couple of sandwiches for the hungry—but there are billions of people who need better access to food. Maybe your effort is better spent working on solutions that can scale.

Much of this essay is baffling to me.

From 2022 to 2023 the fed funds rate was jacked up. The aim of doing this was to, among other things, drive up unemployment, so that more working class people working in supermarkets and the like would become unemployed, and to increase food scarcity for their families. The rate rise affects us as well, with tech hiring somewhat dead since late 2022.

Looking abroad - the International Criminal Court charged Netanyahu, Israel fires on and invades UN bases in Lebanon, Israeli television broadcasts Israeli soldiers raping in Sde Teiman (go look on YouTube for the footage) as rabbis and Knesset MPs swarm to defend them. Gazan children starve as European countries block weapons being sent to Israel. In the US, Biden sends troops abroad and Israel weapons to further the slaughtering, which has spread to the West Bank, Yemen, Syria, Iran and Lebanon. Also, the US vetoes at the UNSC effectively help block Gazan children being fed as they starve. Kamala Harris backs Biden and vows to continue arming and funding Netanyhu doing this, and Trump is even more belligerent. So Americans elected the person enabling this and over 98% who vote will vote for a candidate doing this.

It is not a lack of care or attention to Gazan children, Americans, or 98% of those who vote are paying attention to Gazan children and are trying to starve them - or at least are willing to trade a specific tax cut or whatnot to enable their starvation.

There's nothing about lack of individual or scaled care - the vast majority of Americans work for the opposite - to continue the famine.

Going back to the point of scale - the <2% of people not voting for candidates arming Israel and continuing the Gazan famine are working together as a mass movement and at scale and many for, as the essay mentioned, "socialism", because this <2% has to coordinate and work together against the 98% who are actively pursuing the famine in Gaza, or who are neutral about it and willing to trade support for it for a tax cut and such.

Gazan children don't starve because Americans don't pay individual or scaled attention to Gazan children. They starve because 98% of Americans will vote for someone who works to starve them. It is what the vast majority of Americans are and what America is. And works for domains outside Gaza - like unemployment and the fed funds rate mentioned.