vovchik_ilich [he/him]

[…] is a provocation worthy of military invasion?

See, that’s an entirely different statement. Threatening to join Russia’s geopolitical rival’s military alliance while bordering Russia, is provocation. The acts in Donbas since 2014 are provocation. Is it “worthy of military invasion”? I don’t believe so. The proto-fascist Russian government is clearly not acting entirely out of pure will and self defense, and I’ll be the last to defend it since I have loved ones directly suffering under that government. But it’s important to frame things correctly, and yes, threatening to join NATO while bordering Russia is a huge provocation.

Particularly, NATO has no history of defensiveness (as far as I know it has never intervened for the defensive purposes it’s supposed to uphold), but it has a history of offensiveness. Yugoslavia and Libya can both attest to that, and extra-officially (technically not NATO interventions even if many NATO members participated one way or another), countries such as Iraq can also attest. The case of Iraq is a perfect example of what unprovoked invasion in modern times is, and we are still forced to see libs fall heads over heels for a fucking Dick Satan Cheney endorsement to Kamala “most lethal army in the world” Harris.

So, yes, when a country bordering you chooses to join a historically aggressive military alliance that openly challenges you, that’s huge provocation. And it’s important to state so when we talk about the war in Ukraine.

completely unprovoked

considering joining NATO

Those two statements are in the same phrase… My god

They absolutely don’t both solve the problem, plenty of homeless people in the capitalist world compared to the 0 people in former USSR

Not very hopeful but it’s something

I highly recommend that you get yourself a copy of the book “Human rights in the soviet union” by Albert Szymanski. It discusses the access to goods, healthcare, education, publications in local languages, and much more, for different republics within the USSR, for the period from 1917 to 1980 approximately. There was a famine in Kazakhstan, but how many famines were there in Kazakhstan before communism, and how many were there during?

In the book (which you can probably find online, ehem Anna’s Archive ehem), go to the chapter that discusses the central Asian republics, and look quickly through the tables discussing these metrics, and comparing them to (historically similar pre-1917) countries of the region such as Afghanistan or Pakistan. You’ll see how communism brought literacy, education, healthcare, pensions, women’s rights, and material well-being to central-Asian republics.

I don’t really have a good reason to be skpetical

“Company reports that things will go incredibly well” is very skepticism-worthy

CPI “economists”: “well, since people don’t buy meat anymore because it’s too expensive, we’ll remove it from the basket of goods that we use to calculate inflation. Isn’t that convenient?”

Source: CPI moves to cheaper variants of products over time because people stop being able to afford them, for example they used to use the price of a beef steak in their products basket but switched to ground meat because the price of the former had gone up so much that a majority of people bought ground meat instead.

Probably depends on the country, I’m pretty sure here in Spain you can donate books to libraries, and I highly doubt they go to the publisher and call them to ask “hey, want any good ol’ buckaroos?”

Russia’s Putin as opposed to…? Just funny phrasing

Dismissing entire sections of information simply because they don’t fit into your narrative or are associated with even a government source isn’t good

I routinely do this with US propaganda against China and with Israel anti-palestine propaganda, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I flat-out refuse to listen to news from these sources for the most part

Surely not my point that we should automatically discard and ignore everything from russian government sources, just to be very careful when listening to all recounts and information about an ongoing military conflict

The source isn’t a random russian person though, it’s a “Russian military administration” source, hard for me to trust a source from either government during wartime

Concerning.

I think the comment above yours is legit. There are a few people in the comment section taking the news seemingly at face value, or arguing “if this is true, then…”. All news are propaganda, just different sides, which makes the comment a bit naive, but I get the meaning given the comment section.

Elon energy on your comment

The U.S. has been gunning for Russia for centuries

Technically one century but sure, I don’t deny that the US attitude towards Russia stems from imperialism.

It’s borderline racist to claim that Russia is imperialist

“It’s borderline to say Russia has reached the final stage of capitalism, with the financialization of the economy and the concentration of capital in the hands of a few oligarchs” I really don’t see how it’s racist to say that.

when you claim that Russia is imperialist for defending it’s people from a decades-long siege that is generations old

Establishing a continuity in “Russia” and the reasons for the US hostility towards it for the past 100+ years is absurd. The reasons why Tsarist Russia was expansionist (although not imperialist since it was barely industrialized), weren’t the same as why the USSR invested in military and the US was hostile to it, and aren’t the same as to why modern Russia invests in military and why the US is hostile to it.

for defending it’s people

And I don’t claim that Russia is imperialist because it engages in warfare, that’s not my criteria. The USSR engaged in warfare and Afghanistan and it wasn’t imperialist, the argument could be made that something relatively similar is happening in Ukraine now. My point as to why it’s imperialist is the consolidation of capital in the hands of a few, and the financialization of the economy. The EU is also an empire in this regard. It’s harder to say for China given the wide state control over the private companies. I really fail to see how comparing highly developed capitalism in country A with highly developed capitalism in country B is racist of a State Department talking point.

Again, we’re talking of different definitions of imperialism.

Despite the power of the oligarchs, this battle is about the survival of Russia as a nation-state as a whole, not just the wealth of the rich.

Ok, but that’s exactly the point. The economic interests of capitalist Russia directly oppose those of capitalist USA, why else would the USA be hostile to Russia and push NATO to its borders and blow up the NordStream? Why not do all of those things against, say, Germany? That’s exactly what I mean by imperialist nations colliding, the private capital having opposed interests.

Russia has no case of exporting money abroad to directly influence the outcome of elections

It tries through hackers though, but yes, not remotely on the scale of the US. I’m not saying “Russia is worse than the US” here, I’m saying that according to Lenin’s definition of imperialism, Russia is currently an imperialist state.

Financialization is a feature of capitalism in general

Again, yes, exactly my point, I suggest you read the book I mentioned if you wanna understand what I mean. We agree, we’re just hung up in semantics

The definition of imperialist I’m using is that one of Lenin’s “Imperialism: highest stage of capitalism”. I.e. a developed, capitalist industrial nation, where the financialization of the economy has already taken place, and the competition of small capitalists among each other has given way to cartels, oligopolies and immense concentration of capital in the hands of a few. It’s precisely the conflict between the capitalists in Russia and the capitalists in US that gives rise to conflicts such as the Ukraine war. US is more advanced in imperialism and is the #1 empire on earth right now, but Russia is also an imperialist country by that definition.

No no, I get it, it’s exhausting being a commie and getting constantly these cringelord libs being like “ackchually”

Ok, then I apologize for my first comment