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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • FYI, the debt will be paid by Russian war reparation

    The EU equivalent of saying Mexico Will Pay For the Wall.

    War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land

    Western financing to Ukraine in recent years has been tied to a drastic structural adjustment program that has required austerity and privatization measures, including the creation of a land market for the sale of agricultural land. President Zelenskyy put the land reform into law in 2020 against the will of the vast majority of the population who feared it would exacerbate corruption and reinforce control by powerful interests in the agricultural sector. Findings of the report concur with these concerns. While large landholders are securing massive financing from Western financial institutions, Ukrainian farmers — essential for ensuring domestic food supply — receive virtually no support. With the land market in place, amidst high economic stress and war, this difference of treatment will lead to more land consolidation by large agribusinesses.

    Ukraine’s been operating under the same Shock Doctrine that came for the rest of Eastern Europe following the collapse of the USSR (and much of Latin America and Oceania before that). The government is perpetually in a state of debt to its EU neighbors and it is constantly hemorrhaging state property at cut-throat prices to lowest-bidder private interests.

    The looting of the Soviet sphere isn’t new and it isn’t the result of the Russian invasion. But the sudden acute need for foreign cash, combined with the mass displacement of Ukrainian citizens, has accelerated the process enormously.



  • I respect Cuba 1000x more than China.

    I think the most telling indictment of the Chinese government is its failure to extend aid to its ideological allies abroad, whether that’s Cuba or Kashmir. But when you’re lifting 200M people at home out of poverty with industrial improvements and agricultural modernization, its hard to complain. Beijing has done an amazing job of not-getting-into-wars. More than the Russian Soviets managed by a long shot.

    Unfortunately, they’re still a one-party state without free and fair elections.

    You could say the same thing about California or Florida. What’s annoying is that “one-party state” is held up as some kind of indictment without regard to how popular the party is. Like, I hate Texas politics, but I’m not naive enough to believe the state lacks a Republican majority. I’m not going to hold Cuba to a higher standard, simply because they’re venerating Che Guevera instead of T. Boone Pickens.


  • if they were socialist then the workers would own the means of production

    Google “China Negative List Foreign Investment”. You might learn something about how Chinese federal laws guarantee domestic ownership of property and titles and understand why so much of the wealth generated within China remains within the Chinese working class.

    They’re both just capitalist oligarchies with dictators

    Is there a country in exist that you believe is Actually Existing Socialism, or are you going to shove your fingers in your ears and insist SEOs aren’t real, state central planning isn’t happening, democratic elections don’t count, and Marx didn’t say anything about the socialist transition in his writings.




  • The Uyghurs, btw.

    Its so crazy to see liberals insist that Uyghur Genocide is a big problem that requires US military intervention but the Israeli Very Legal And Good Police Action Against Hamas For October 7th is going great and actually Palestinians should be thanking the IDF for all their hard work.

    Like, what even is your definition of genocide anymore? I’ve seen liberals insist that the Uyghurs are being brutalized by a Chinese government building schools that teach Mandarian in the rural corners of Xinjiang. I’ve seen liberals insist a Taiwanese BDSM porn was proof that China’s police state was in violation of a dozen different treaties and conventions. I’ve seen Tibetian life expectancy double over the last 40 years and then received an earful about how the Tibetian ethnic government was doing terrorism by importing modern Chinese TVs, Radios, and Computers with Mandarian language broadcasts into the region.

    Meanwhile, you’ve got liberals insisting Greta Thunberg is the antichrist when she tries to deliver baby formula to the Gaza shoreline.

    Absolute obliteration of the western understanding of the term. Israelis tortured an orthopedic surgeon to death and there’s absolutely no news coverage of it. Bolsonaro butchers native people in Brazil so he can clear cut their rainforests and the liberals still back him. The Philippines is just an endless string of police actions against union organizers and nobody cares. But Kenya gets a new hospital and that’s Chinese genocide in West Africa.



  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlPerspectives about life
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    18 days ago

    Americans threw Eugene Debbs in jail for protesting WW1. Americans unleashed the national guard on college campuses at Columbia and Kent State and on anti-homeless activists in Chicago and police reformer in Baltimore and Ferguson and now LA and New Orleans, in an endless war on anyone that even smelled slightly of whatever we’re defining as Marxist of late. These are people who spend God only knows how much money and manpower to put a surveillance dragnet around The Quackers, while screaming from the pulpit about how there’s no such thing as religious freedom anymore.

    Even if we completely rebranded socialism you’d make it your mission to add the Soviet imagery back in and remind everyone of it.

    They brand Donald Trump as a Soviet Socialist. It’s utterly divorced from reality.