That story about China aggressively blocking Canadian surveillance planes is so great. :xi-gun:

Libs on reddit are really saying that "All war is genocide" in one comment and then saying that the middle East crusade was different in the same comment chain.

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:yes-honey-left:

not sure if this was shared here previously, it was published back in March

YCL article about a 2017 meeting with Mikhail Kononovich (i think still imprisoned with his brother Alexander?)

While many countries in Europe have large far-right and neo-Nazi movements, none have been institutionalized as is the case in Ukraine. In no other country can you see swastikas and fascist symbols displayed so openly – not only displayed, but even sold as merchandise to tourists, such as Azov battalion t-shirts and bracelets, and Nazi medals and antiques sold by street vendors. When I visited in 2017 and 2019, the red and black flags of Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) could be seen as frequently and prominently as the blue and yellow on the streets of Kyiv and Lviv. Not only statues of Lenin had been removed, but so too statues of the Ukrainian generals and anti-fascist leaders who had fought and died to liberate Ukraine from Nazi occupation during WWII, known in the former Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War. During my time as a student there, I witnessed a demonstration by elderly veterans of this war against the removal of one of the last such statues, a demonstration that was met by violence carried out by masked thugs in a display so shameful it would be difficult to believe had I not seen it with my own eyes. Some of these statues have been replaced, like the streets which have been renamed, in bitter irony, after Banderite Nazi collaborators and perpetrators of genocide.

The Ukraine I witnessed, however, was one which had been so mutilated by nationalistic fervour that at times I could not even sit through my classes at the university, where professors were paid in American dollars to explain that “Hitler was a very smart man. The swastika, you see, was in fact a Ukrainian symbol!” Frequently courses on culture and history would descend into racial pseudoscience teaching that Ukrainians were an Aryan people, while Russians had been tainted by the Mongol yoke of the 13th to 15th centuries, which had imbued them with Asiatic despotism from which they never recovered. It was in their blood, and they could understand nothing but violence.

There were other Canadian students present during these classes who had come from the University of Manitoba – insufferable Cossack cosplayers who openly praised Bandera as a Ukrainian hero. It is troubling to think that these same students would return to Canada to receive degrees in history and Slavic studies, and one day perhaps become professors or leaders of Ukrainian-Canadian organizations.

Mikhail grew more serious as he began to explain the conditions to which he and other communists had been subjected in Ukraine since the Maidan coup in 2014, which had seen fascists, neo-Nazis, and Banderites rise to proiminence both in formal government positions and in terms of their impunity on the streets. Not long after the coup, the office had been raided by these same fascists armed with machine guns while police waited outside. Mikhail pointed to a short thin hole gouged into his desk and looked me in the eye. He then placed his hand over this mark revealing a matching scar in his hand where a knife had gone through and pinned him to the desk while he was beaten. He then showed me his missing teeth which had been knocked out before he was dragged unconscious from the building to an unpopulated area in the forest. Here he was beaten continuously and threatened with death, but miraculously was left with enough life to drag himself to relative safety after his assailants had gone.

Even his five year-old daughter was not safe, Mikhail explaining that the fascists had brazenly gone to her school, and that no one made any attempt to stop them from attempting to question and intimidate her in front of her classmates and teachers.

The Ukrainian government, meanwhile, had prevented him from leaving the country for any purpose, and had even attempted to bribe him to betray his comrades and spread lies about communists in Ukraine. Of course, Mikhail had not survived such brutal attacks just to be bought by increasingly worthless Ukrainian hryvnia. He explained to me that through violence, repression, and terror, the number of Ukrainian communists had plummeted to a third of what it had been before the coup, with the Communist Party of Ukraine banned by the government. Only those capable of withstanding the years of state and paramilitary terrorism now remained. It is worth noting that this combined terror from above and from below is a definining feature of fascism.

At that time, he asked me to bring a message back to comrades in Canada. If there is one thing that I should take from our conversation and return with, he said, it is this: “We never thought it could happen here. We were unprepared, and our organization was unable to defend itself. We forgot one of Lenin’s most important teachings… Do not think that in Canada you are safe from fascism, and that they will not one day come for the communists there.”

Larry Summers, a former treasury secretary and White House economic adviser under two Democratic presidents told CNN “the unfortunate, painful fact” is that with such low unemployment and high inflation as the US is experiencing now, a recession is almost certain within the next two years.

Also close personal friend of :epstein:

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Why a Not-So-Hot Economy Might Be Good News NYT

Bigger job gains, faster wage growth and more consumer spending are all, in normal times, signs of a healthy economy. Growth might not be sufficient to ensure widespread prosperity, but it is necessary — making any loss of momentum a worrying sign that the economy could be losing steam or, worse, headed into a recession.

But these are not normal times. With nearly twice as many open jobs as available workers and companies struggling to meet record demand, many economists and policymakers argue that what the economy needs right now is not more, but less — less hiring, less wage growth and above all less inflation, which is running at its fastest pace in four decades.

...

Employers have responded to the hot competition for workers exactly the way Econ 101 says they should, by raising pay. Average hourly earnings were up 5.5 percent in April from a year earlier, more than twice the rate they were rising before the pandemic. Normally, faster wage growth would be good news. Persistently weak pay increases were a bleak hallmark of the long, slow recovery that followed the last recession. But even some economists who bemoaned those sluggish gains at the time say the current rate of wage growth is unsustainable.

Fed officials are watching closely for signs of a “wage-price spiral,” a self-reinforcing pattern in which workers expect inflation and therefore demand raises, leading employers to increase prices to compensate. Once such a cycle takes hold, it can be difficult to break — a prospect Mr. Powell has cited in explaining why the central bank has become more aggressive in fighting inflation. “It’s a risk that we simply can’t run,” he said at a news conference last month. “We can’t allow a wage-price spiral to happen. And we can’t allow inflation expectations to become unanchored. It’s just something that we can’t allow to happen, and so we’ll look at it that way.”

Some economists, especially on the left, say there is little evidence that wage growth is feeding inflation, let alone that a wage-price spiral is developing. They contend that the recent pay gains reflect a rare moment of worker power in the labor market, and that the Fed would be wrong to snuff it out. But wages, on average, aren’t keeping up with inflation, meaning that many workers are losing ground despite the strong labor market. For workers to prosper, their wages need to be rising after adjusting for inflation — which almost certainly requires inflation to come down. “What people are feeling is real,” said Darrick Hamilton, an economist at the New School in New York. “A wage increase that’s not as high as the increase in the price of milk does not make you better off.”

These absolutely demonic motherfuckers. Whispering "This is for your own good!" as they stomp on your neck.

Medvedev: Ukraine's refusal to reach an understanding may lead to its loss of additional territories and the loss of its national independence.

EU state skirts gas-for-ruble requirements RT

Finland has continued importing Russian LNG after being cut off by Moscow from its natural gas supply over its refusal to pay in rubles, Finnish Gasum spokeswoman Olga Vaisanen said on Wednesday.

She said that the company has two different contracts to receive Russian gas. One of them entails pipeline supplies through the Imatra entry point and the other is for liquefied natural gas (LNG) transported by tankers.

“Pipeline gas supplies have stopped. The purchase of liquefied natural gas is not subject to sanctions or ruble requirements,” Vaisanen said.

made a post on reddit for the first time in a bit about how in my view a majority of men are extremely creepy and predatory and every neckbeard and his granddad came out of the woodwork to say i was a fake account or some shit lmao

like for real maybe like 5-10% of the men i have interacted with in my life are actual decent people, and it isnt like i havent interacted with male culture a lot because i def have as a trans woman

Gas here is DKK 18,19 per litre, or USD 9.96 per gallon if you're a yank.

Putin must feel so owned right now.

Russians Trading Drinking Water for Help Covering Up Crimes: Mariupol Mayor Newsweek

Russians are using residents of Mariupol to hide evidence of alleged “war crimes” in the occupied Ukrainian city in order to gain access to drinking water, according to Mayor Vadym Boychenko.

“In a hurry, the people of Mariupol told us that they continue to be bullied: They simply do not give away the imported drinking water but want the people of Mariupol to go to dismantle the debris and help them hide these war crimes,” he said, according to a translation of his comments.

Why is the dipshit mayor inventing stories like this instead of talking about The Russian army literaly feeding the residents:

Military investigators of the Russian Investigative Committee prepared porridge for the residents of Mariupol

Field kitchens were set up on Nakhimov Square. Hot meals were received by 4.5 thousand residents of the city. The children were given sweets

More than ideology this is just so fucking insulting.

Then again maybe its just all propaganda, the food is just plastic props and the "citizens" are paid actors and you should believe whatever you want.

Perhaps it has something to do with pay? Just maybe?

Or the millions of people with long covid. Or companies doing scams in order to avoid hiring people(e.g PPP loan scam) in order to justify higher prices and profit margins driving inflation.

Our new research report provides a global assessment of the quality of national elections around the world from 2012-21, based on nearly 500 elections across 170 countries. The US is the lowest ranked liberal democracy in the list. It comes just 15th in the 29 states in the Americas, behind Costa Rica, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago and others, and 75th overall.

While the US ranking is pathetc and funny this whole premise is stupid though, the US is not more or less corrupt than Brazil the place where they coup the president and then jailed the front running candidate so that the right wing fascist with support of the capitalist class would win. But realy ranking democracies is just :brainworms: imo.

Russia seeing success in Ukraine after months of failure, analysts say — but don’t expect it to last long

Time to move the slider.

"Ukraine is going to win, this war is a massive blunder, Putler is an idiot."

"Russia is too slow, the war should be over in 2 weeks, this is not Iraq 2.0, the Russian military is pathetic and weak. Ukraine is winning look at [insert random story about soldier eating dog or 200000 tanks lost]".

"Ok Russia is actualy winning, but they were losing before! :rage-cry: I'm not owned and also they will lose trust me." <----

"Russia wins military victory while Ukraine holds on to diplomatic victory by refusing to negotiate with Putin."

"How Ukraine lost the war but won the hearts of people around the world. We should learn and respect from the heroic sacrifice of the defenders of the Free World against the forces of Evil™."