Of course! You realize, however, that the contractors still get paid when the program never materializes. This is grift 101. They’ll design a new super advanced radar over the course of years, the specifications and design will slowly change, then it’ll be cancelled and replaced with a new program.

every country loves having a bunch of stupid americans going around drunk driving and sexually harrassing local women. this is a serious threat

Not quite nothing to show for it, Iran now controls the strait of hormuz

fuck off, randy

The best part is it’s not only expensive, but a lot of it is irreplaceable. The E-3 that was destroyed is out of production, and its replacement was cancelled. The ground radars are even better - the destroyed THAAD radars used gallium nitride, and the AN/FPS-132 (formerly the largest US radar in the middle east) used gallium arsenide. Who produces 99% of the world’s gallium? China, and they’ve banned exports of it.

America’s military power isn’t able to regenerate because America doesn’t have the production capacity to do so. Thus, any losses are a basically permanent degradation.

Social democracy? What social democracy? First things first, there is no social democracy in the west, the last vestiges are in the process of being swept away. You can expect more austerity from here on. It’s a moot point anyway, because almost all of the social democracies were (and are, to the extent that social democracy still exists) in the imperialist bloc and complicit in the exploitation and domination of the third world.

Once again, I didn’t say that China was definitively socialist, I said that they were closer to it than the west. The question is whether the Dengist liberalization was an NEP-style strategic retreat with the aim of developing and eventually progressing to socialism, or if they’re just developmentalist social democrats. Either way, they’re better than any given western country (of which even the most social democratic are imperialist running dogs).

So, in terms of the scoreboard, marxism-leninism has achieved multiple socialist states that bettered the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and then either collapsed or liberalized into a kind of developmentalist quasi social democracy (which is nevertheless better than liberal democracy), and then you also have Cuba which still manages to hold on, barely, under overwhelming pressure, and has been forced to liberalize by circumstance. Not great, but it could be a lot worse, and there were some real triumphs.

Anarchism, or libertarian socialism, or what have you, has managed a few temporary statelets and has never been able to seriously oppose capitalist imperialism. The biggest difference is in mentality - the Anarchist aversion to authority and centralization means that they aren’t capable of acting effectively in a wartime enviroment. You have to realize that any revolutionary movment that succeeds will be an immediate target for every reactionary power, and that survival will require authoritarian measures to be taken. It’s a simple fact, in wartime you do not have the luxury of absolute freedom. Anyone who makes concrete gains for the working class will have to defend them.

As an aside, I think the real test will come once American hegemony has fully collapsed, which thankfully seems to be coming sooner than later. China’s treatment of the rest of the world once they’re the premier world power will be the best metric to judge them by.

You wouldn’t have been a fanatical Nazi if you were around 85 years ago, but you would have tacitly supported them.

In a socialist state like China before Dengism or the USSR, how would unions work? Under capitalism unions are fantastic, but if you have a socialist economy, an independent union is essentially bargaining with all of society. A union with a lot of leverage, such as dockworkers, could extract inordinate concessions from the rest of society, not the capitalists. They would become a resented labour aristocracy. Now, I don’t think this holds in post-Deng China, but from my understanding there is a fair amount of labour organizing going on there. For instance, a few years ago an American business owner owed a bunch of back pay to his Chinese employees, and they suspected he was about to lay everyone off and close the factory without paying them, so they took his ass captive. They trapped him in his office and the police didn’t raise a finger to free him. Fat chance in hell that you’d see that in any western country.

As for public healthcare, there is, it’s just not completely free. The cost is very low, however, and the same goes for high shool. They just recently expanded affordable public childcare as well. Their recent anti-poverty program was also very successful.

To take a step back, I think you aren’t correctly understanding why western countries have/had a social safety net and toleration of unions. A lot of it was due to the struggle of the domestic labour movement, yes, but a big part of it was also the threat of the Soviet Union - with a prominent alternative to capitalism, they had extra incentive to keep the domestic working class placated. In short, they bought us off by sharing some of the spoils of imperialism. However, with falling rates of profit and the continual drive to increase profit, they’ve been progressively dialing it back in successive rounds of austerity, while letting wages stagnate compared to the cost of living. These social programs are only going to degrade and be dismantled over time.

How is this distinguished from post-Deng China? On one hand, China does not have a global empire to extract profits from, so the steadily increasing standard of living for their working class is a result of their successful economic program rather than them paying off the working class with a share of the plunder. The increase has not been equal, with the standard of living in cities increasing more rapidly than in rural areas, and with the bourgeoisie getting richer faster than the proletariat, but it is nevertheless a general increase across all of society, while the western pseudo-democracies are seeing exponential enrichment for the ruling class combined with stagnation in the middle and worsening conditions for the working class.

The main reason, however, is that capital is not in control of China. Capital is allowed to exist, and has a seat at the table, but it is constrained by the state. If capitalists cross certain lines, if they get too corrupt, act against the national interest, or act egregiously against the interests of society, they are dealt with very harshly, up to and including execution. Jack Ma got too big for his britches and thought he could freely criticize the state banks and financial regulators, claiming that they were stifling innovation. The state made it quite clear who was in charge, and Ma disappeared from public life for about 6 months. China has billionaires, yes, but they keep them on a fairly tight leash, and they routinely execute them.

Once again, they aren’t perfect and I have plenty of criticisms, but they’re doing so much better than any western country, where capital is unconstrained, operates with impunity, and is stripping the copper wire from the walls to chase profits. It’s basically incomparable. Chinese people, having seen concrete and rapid increases to their standard of living, are optimistic hopeful for the future, while we in the west see only doom and worsening conditions.

In socio-economic terms, the rothschilds are much more relevant than the hapsburgs. The Hapsburgs are just another well off family now, the power of the aristocracy is over. The Rothschilds are still very rich and have some influence, though not like they did in the 1800s.

I’m gonna blow your mind on this one, but it’s actually really obvious if you think about it.

Nazi Germany’s original plan was to deport the Jews. One plan they had was to move them all to Madagascar, but they ended up going with a more piecemeal method of just deporting them to neighbouring countries, or on ships. The mass extermination only started in earnest when they conquered all these new territories and suddenly all these people they deported were back in their territory, plus a whole bunch of other Jews.

Fast forward to the present, and the original plan, to deport all Jews from Germany, is basically successful. There are very few Jews in Germany today. To a German politician, the proper place for Jews is Israel.

Additionally, if former German Jews (i.e. people or the descendents of who fled, or of Holocaust victims) were to return to Germany, it would open up some very thorny legal questions. Between 5 and 8 billion reichsmarks of money and property was stolen from Jews in the third reich. If the rightful owners were to return, this property would have to be returned. It’s much easier for the German state to simply pay reparations directly to israel than to pay it to the victims of the holocaust, let alone actually return the property.

So, the Nazis did the dirty work, got rid of the people whose rightful place German politicians will still tell you is outside of Germany, and acquired a lot of capital, and now the good modern democratic german state gets to reap the benefits. All wrapped up in a tight little package.

Finally, Israel is a tool of imperialism used to keep the middle east down and help with extraction of capital from the region, and also Mossad probably has videos of EU politicians doing pedophilia

poor little guy was rendered completely insane by an evil wizard casting the spell of forlorn encystment on him

Neither Korea or China are perfect, but they both survived. Was Kim Il Sung a real ideological communist or just an opportunist? He’s dead, so we can’t ask him, but living standards in the North were higher than in the South under his rule, there was free healthcare. Private capital still seems to have little power in North Korea, and the power of capital is curtailed in China as well. Whether or not they can be called socialist is up for debate, but they’re certainly closer to socialism than any Western democracies.

As far as democracy goes, we’ll take China as an example. You wouldn’t call them a democracy, but they’re much more responsive to the needs and interests of the people than any western democracy. What’s better, a single-party state that acts in the interests of the people, or a democratic state that completely ignores them?

What you mean is “I would prefer to have a high degree of personal freedom for myself while my government supports genocide of others, rather than have less personal freedom while my government doesn’t support genocide.”

Apropos of nothing, Nazi Germany wasn’t a bad place to live if you weren’t one of the targeted groups and if you stayed in line and didn’t espouse the wrong politics. Until the war came home and the bombs started falling, anyway.

There’s a weird thing with Europe where the far-right is less supportive of the fascist world empire (since they’re sovereigntists, while the fasicst world empire is supranational), while the center right and center left are all-in.

the Rothschilds feature prominently in a lot of looney conspiracy theories, but that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as the Rothschilds. A schizophrenic thinking the CIA is broadcasting them mind control waves through their fillings doesnt mean that there’s no such thing as the CIA.

I’m agreeing with you entirely, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust - 3 million in the camps, and the remainder in the Holocaust-by-bullets or in mobile gas chamber vans or some other means.

Also, fun fact about West Germany, they made all the gay concentration camp inmates serve out the rest of their sentences (though I believe at regular prisons) since being gay was still illegal. The DDR did not do this. West Germany also had a program to place foster children with pedophiles since they figured they’d love them. I shit you not.

Given that Germany’s democratic state supports genocide and bans anti-genocide speech, I think the KPD were probably right.

Can you imagine a world where watching fox news gets you executed? i can’t even think about it. that’s why you gotta live for today

I really hope that this doesn’t end up being the case given what it implies for the future of ground combat.