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Cake day: January 22nd, 2024

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  • Territorially? Yes, Russia is winning. But politically, economically and socially? Russia already lost. The deaths of thousands of soldiers in the face of Russia’s demographic crisis will result fewer labour force, which means lower tax revenue. The Russian economy is in war footing and this is already causing inflation because of heightened government expenditure, and businesses struggling to pay the ever increasing wage demands of civilians at home, who replaced the jobs that would have been filled instead by soldiers from the front. With secondary sanctions, even Chinese banks are reluctant to lend to Russia. The future generations of Russians will be paying for the economic and social consequences of the war in Ukraine. In essence, Russia may be winning territorially, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory with generational consequences.





  • Plenty of Hasbara in Reddit these days combing through any Israel- Palestine conflict.

    As someone who grew up in Ireland, I know for a fact that Ireland is one of the first countries to support Israeli statehood and then the two state solution. As a matter of fact, one of Ireland’s ministers is a Jew who later on served as advisor to one of the Israeli political party that will eventually rule the country: the Likud party. Unfortunately, with ultra-Zionism now taking hold on Israeli society, Ireland recognise modern Israel’s attempt to genocide Palestinians so there is a rift between Ireland and Israel.

    Fast forward to present day, when the Irish parliament drew up a bill to ban goods from Israeli occupied territories, comments in Reddit swarmed like ants accusing Ireland of historical antisemitism/anti-Zionism and perpetuating the myth that then Irish prime minister, Eamon De Valera, sent condolences upon hearing the news of Hitlers death. These comments have been heavily upvoted. However, they conveniently and purposefully forget said Ireland’s history of supporting Israeli statehood and close political ties with the country’s early days.











  • I wasn’t convinced at first that NATO is dead on Trump’s first term. But here we are and it is a long time coming.

    Some analysts think that the unipolar world is over, and that we’re heading into a multipolar world again but dominated by regional blocs. The EU is definitely there, and sometime later the African Union will become more cohesive and globally influential. But I don’t see Latin America having as strong regional grouping as the EU. In Asia, we can forget it because Asians tend to be insular. There is ASEAN but they do not have the same solidarity as the EU.


  • Trump is kinda right. Charles De Gaulle wanted a united Europe to prevent Anglo-American influence. Aside from his Anglophobia, he vetoed UK joining then EEC because he thought UK is a Trojan horse for American influence into Europe. He also thought that the British are reluctant Europeans anyhow, so why let them in?

    Fast forward 60 years later, and De Gaulle was found right. US companies tried to lobby the EU through UK. The Brits voted for Brexit, and the US finally became an unreliable ally.

    For so much of the French being chauvinistic in a cringey way, they are right not to commit to Anglo influence or Atlanticism, presciently. The French still likes to assert their own global influence but in multilateral way with other countries. Macron and De Gaulle are correct for looking for strategic autonomy.

    Edit: I also want to add, that the Brussels effect forces other countries to adopt higher standards and regulations if they want to trade with the EU. Obviously, many right wing Americans such as Trump don’t like this.