• 5 Posts
  • 375 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 16th, 2023

help-circle

  • History has misjudged Jeffery Sachs according to… Jeffery Sachs!

    Let’s be real, he’s the main guy pushing the “NATO expansion” theory of Russian aggression everywhere, and it exists mainly to cover for his own crimes.

    What’s more likely: that Russian revanchism came from anger over some arcane treaty negotiations, or that it came from the absolute collapse in material condition, civil society, population, daily lived experience and life expectancy that Russians experienced as Sachs and his evil clients dismantled the once-great civilization for their own enrichment? What do you think Marx’s assessment of those two theories would be?

    Sachs is a bag man. He helped the oligarchs destroy Russia and then he made himself useful to the new ruler when they were gone. He also spends a lot of time in Beijing and has a lot of good things to say about Xi as well. The guy’s a serpent.




  • I saw this as the supposed plan:

    per WSJ: It may propose delaying Ukraine’s NATO membership for 20 years, establishing a 1,200 km demilitarized zone along the current front line, and leaving 20% of occupied Ukrainian territory under Russian control—while the U.S. would continue arms support under these conditions.

    The problem is, this isn’t an acceptable plan according to Russia. Russia has insisted that:

    1. Ukraine retreats from all of the oblasts that are currently partially occupied by Russia (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson) as well as giving up claims to Crimea, and Russia takes ownership of everything without a fight
    2. Ukraine’s army is demobilized and Ukraine is demilitarized
    3. Ukraine is banned from joining any international organization, not just NATO (so no EU for instance)
    4. Ukraine receives no more military aid fro the west.

    Trump is going to find out that you can’t unilaterally declare peace.


  • The proposal was submitted by the Russian Federation shortly after they attacked Ukraine, back when Russia was still claiming that “de-nazifying” Ukraine was the purpose of the invasion.

    https://press.un.org/en/2022/gashc4365.doc.htm

    Several delegates took to the floor to express concerns over Moscow’s attempt to exploit the pretext of combating neo-Nazism to justify its brutal war against Ukraine, with Ukraine’s delegate asserting that the draft has nothing in common with the genuine fight against Nazism and neo-Nazism. Echoing his concerns, the United Kingdom’s delegate stressed that the resolution is part of Moscow’s attempt to justify its aggression against Ukraine by furthering lies and distorting history.

    The United States’ delegate called the resolution “a cynical attempt” of Moscow to further its geopolitical aims by invoking the Holocaust and Second World War. In the same vein, Australia’s delegate called Moscow’s weaponization of the Holocaust and Nazism unacceptable.




  • I used to believe that the Cuba embargo is due to Cuban refugee vote in Florida.

    But that doesn’t make sense anymore given that Florida is no longer a swing state. In fact it never really made sense since the demo that is very pro-embargo has always been solidly Republican and therefore unwinnable.

    So what really explains the embargo? Quite frankly I think it’s banana republic foreign policy and wealthy people in the US not wanting there to be a successful socialist state. For instance, the recent energy crisis in Cuba is driven by the Biden administration sanctioning oil tankers who visit the island. Why on earth would the supposedly pro-Cuba democrats do that? Who asked them to do that? Who had the clout to make them do that? Some losers in Florida who were going to vote for Trump in a red state anyway?










  • They would have had to build that infrastructure. I’m not saying fundraising is easy. But it’s possible as proven by wikipedia. They could have cut Google loose 10 years ago and said "we’re going to use our runway to try to put together a wikimedia foundation style fundraising operation. I don’t think they can do it now because the trust, goodwill and quite frankly, userbase is gone.


  • What on earth would that do? The poisonous leadership would not use it to improve the browser nor would they start working for donors instead of Google.

    My point is that there is a funding model that they could have pursued when they still had goodwill and trust. And my hope is if the government finally puts the boot in with Google, then this current version of mozilla will collapse, the rats will leave the ship and hopefully a good browser will emerge the way firefox emerged from netscape.