It’s been over 60

But also, we keep paying one half of America to kill the other half. That’s got a stabilizing effect

Actually, we did all those things and now America is Great Again

Gotta spend money to make genocides

Why did Russia not invade Poland then?

Russia doesn’t border Poland

Asking Saudi tankers to do in 2026 what Iranian dissidents were forced to do in 1988.

Every time I read these stats, I have to wonder how many getting killed who are contractors, mercenaries, military families, or civilian bystanders that the media decides they don’t want to count.

The nukes aren’t a deterrent if they’re manned by the colonizing entity.

And Russia invaded Crimea in response to the Maiden Revolution, which ousted a friendly government that was giving Russia easy access to the Crimean ports. Crimea hosts the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Imagine the US response if The Philippines or Japan installed a pro-China government.

It’s probably because arguments about China with “western leftists” are very fresh in the minds of “western libs.”

China’s foreign minister says Iran war ‘should never have happened’

I can see how this would rub certain folks raw, particularly when Iran has been an Enemy Nation for two full generations and change.

It would be like going into every post about bad things US Republicans are doing to make it about how bad the US Democrats are.

I might argue that the problem with the American two party system is that it represents two different faces of American capital. Republicans and Democrats have an annoying habit of agreeing on far more than they disagree.

I don’t think you can make the same argument about US and Chinese foreign policy, even if you can argue they’re both functionally authoritarian police states.

Very weird that the response to this news article - both here and in the cross-posts - appears to be getting extremely mad at western leftists.

We’re so far afield from “Free Tibet”. Or even “Fuck the CCP”. It appears the knee-jerk reaction to articles like this is to get angry at rival Fediverse instances.

“Muslim sleeper cells!” is such a 2003 era white nationalist talking point.

The Iranian expat community has been vocally in support of the bombings.

He hobbled their counter offensive

He extended state-of-the-art telecommunications on contract from the US, then yanked it back because he wanted more money. Which is what private industry always does, the moment they see an opportunity to squeeze someone for extra juice.

I’m personally of the opinion that the NATO block doesn’t want this war to end, because they see it as a way to bleed both Ukraine and Russia until they’re weak enough to re-colonize. This is part of a much broader pattern of NATO fumbled support for Ukraine, such that Russians can pursue a minimal advance while Ukrainians keep jumping into the meat grinder trying to slow it down.

War is a collection of key moments

The most glaring moment, for me, was the Prigozhin lightning raid on Moscow. Russian high command was in chaos. The front line was depleted of reinforcements. Ukraine… didn’t advance an inch.

After that, I was convinced Ukraine was never intended to win this fight.

How on earth would a nuclear arsenal have benefited the Maiden Revolutionaries?

If anything, a nuclear armed Ukraine would have been invaded by Russia that much sooner.

They had nukes

They had nukes under a Moscow-aligned government. They surrendered those nukes to win trade concessions from their Western partners.

Had they keep their weapons, they’d have had a much larger contingent of Russian military personal in the country for the next 30 years.

Instead we left them out to dry

We’ve sent them hundreds of billions of dollars in military hardware, mercenary staff, and logistical support.

They’re losing the war because NATO underestimated the offensive capability of the Russian military, especially over an enormous front line. Not because they lack raw firepower.

What do you think would have happened after Russia crossed into the Donbas over cross border shelling? Would Zelensky have responded by… nuking half the Oblast? Or are you suggesting everyone should start flinging nukes at each other’s capital cities?

The biggest deterrent Iran had wasn’t nuclear. It was their proximity to the Straight of Hormuz, with the potential to shut down a fifth of global fossil fuel traffic.

Trump blew straight past that breaker. He wasn’t deterred because he did not give a shit.

That’s not to say Iran shouldn’t have developed a nuclear weapon. But there’s no reason to believe a Pete Hegseth/Israel Katz joint brain trust would have respected it

Turns out the theory of Mutual Assured Destruction was invented by Kim Jung Un, as a spec of genetic material living in his father’s sperm that was still lodged in his grandfather’s scrotum.

This is the true unlimited power of Scientific Marxism.

Venezuela and Cuba are coming out ahead, simply by falling onto the back burner.

Koryo Tours, based in Beijing, China, offers several marathon packages to foreigners, departing from Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang.

Packages start from €2,190 ($2,529; £1,894) for 2.5 nights in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, including a marathon place and “highlights” of the capital and tickets were sold out this year, according to the agency’s website.

Is this just an ad for a tourist company that got smuggled into a BBC article?

There was some age-old article that talked about how early Reddit admins relied on bots to simulate participation in subreddits as a means of goosing engagement. This was billed as their secret sauce for running Digg into the ground (although Digg did a fantastic job of shooting themselves in the feet).

I dont think you can blame everything Orban does on Americans

Sure. He’s got a huge network of domestic supporters who are along for the ride.

Every fellow American I know hates and mistrusts their government? To be fair, all of the people I spend energy associating with are strongly progressive.

Will you distrust the government when it flips back to Dem control?

Obama currently has a 90% approval among liberals. It doesn’t seem like they’ve learned anything.

Orban is a fucking FSB puppet

He came up through US anti-communist front groups and has turned his country out to Silicon Valley goons and evangelical reactionaries.

So had Putin, at least during the War on Terror era.

They’ve been peas in a pod under every Republican administration since Bush 41. At best, you could describe them as Rogue Assets, assuming you ignored how often they work to benefit American industry.