• mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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      6 months ago

      Since you’ve rejected the idea of actually computing the involved countries’ industrial capacity so we can have a conversation grounded in reality, I’m happy to just throw anecdotes at you.

      Russian airplanes are hitting the edges of their none-of-our-internal-industry-can-maintain-them safe flying parameters. For the rest of the world, it’s not difficult to keep the planes in the air, and it’s a huge deal when one suffers a malfunction. In Russia, serious air accidents are about to become commonplace.

      I’d rather have all-imported steel and working airplanes than domestic steel and broken planes. Gimme another?

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        6 months ago

        Have you even heard of the Boeing 737? There’s an entire wikipedia entry just on one model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737

        I like how you have to resort to future casting from a WaPo article as opposed to just leaving the content of that propaganda rag to stand on it’s own though. Also, is your point that the West is engaged in collective punishment of civilians through sanctions? Because as the article you referenced says.

        “Of course sanctions affect flight safety,” said Russian aviation analyst Andrei Menshenin in an interview. “They can’t not affect it.”

        It’s really shocking how your reasoning works. The USA, the country with the unilateral power to collectively punish nearly 80% of the world’s human population can’t produce healthy aircraft. Meanwhile, the civilian population of Russia purchases those planes on false USian promises of quality, and then the USA enacts collective punishment on those civilians by denying them the ability to buy parts for the US made aircraft which are made like garbage, and you think that’s evidence that Russia is not doing well? You even put it up against literally the ability to make steel in one of the world’s two dominant historical steel centers (Germany is the other one).

        You’re a hoot.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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          6 months ago

          “Hey bro I’m gonna go shoot up my neighbor’s house.”

          “Um… I’m gonna stop fixing your lawnmower for you that I manufactured for you.”

          “COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT my kids will suffer”

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            6 months ago

            Ah the false equivalency of the unreasonable metaphor. What a useful technique to avoid your rhetorical failings.

            • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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              6 months ago

              My brother I offered to debate you on factual terms and you said no I wanna construct narratives. I literally told you, that’s going to be a waste of time because it’s just us shouting narratives at each other.

              I can point out the broken planes and broken heating systems. You can point out the shut-down steel plant and Germany’s industrial sector dropping by 2% in 2023. None of it means anything. It’s just little data points. But you chose this silly rhetorical environment, not me.

              Oh, also, I’m interested in your explanation for this: When everything kicked off, Russia simply kept any airliners it had leased, effectively stealing them from the West. That’s a big part of why they’re fucked on maintenance, because any goodwill they might have had to get some help keeping them in the air is permanently gone. The West is still examining the legal options for confiscating frozen Russian sanction-money and using it to fund the war, but it hasn’t done so yet. Why not? How would you compare and contrast these two actions (assuming that you acknowledge them both as reality)?

                • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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                  6 months ago

                  300 billion is the worldwide total, not the US total.

                  So my point in contrasting those two situation is that the vast majority of that money is still sitting there, frozen, and actually “stealing” it is still considered a big deal 2 years in, with a lot of debate about when and how to go about it through legal means and whether to do it at all. Whereas with the planes, it was just right away “yoink they’re ours now.”

                  One of my other interlocutors said, more or less, that of course they can’t take the sanctions money completely, because it would be such a blatant theft that no one would ever trust the West again. Which, I don’t think that’s completely a wrong take on it, but then… what about the planes? How does that fit into that? That was my point.

              • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                6 months ago

                factual terms

                industrial sector dropping by 2% in 2023

                It’s just little data points

                Make up your mind. You don’t get to decide which facts matter and which don’t. Every fact you’ve thrown out has been devoid of the critical context. Every fact I’ve thrown out you have said “doesn’t matter because it isn’t the right fact”.

                I’m interested in your explanation for this: When everything kicked off, Russia simply kept any airliners it had leased, effectively stealing them from the West.

                You’re right, Russia should have returned every one of those planes immediately. What a doofus you are.

                That’s a big part of why they’re fucked on maintenance, because any goodwill they might have had to get some help keeping them in the air is permanently gone

                No you fuckwit. It’s the sanctions. Goodwill doesn’t allow US companies to sell parts to Russia under fucking sanctions.

                The West is still examining the legal options for confiscating frozen Russian sanction-money and using it to fund the war, but it hasn’t done so yet. Why not? How would you compare and contrast these two actions (assuming that you acknowledge them both as reality)?

                LOL, sanction-money. You’re so delusional. The West is still trying to figure out if it should STEAL the money and assets of Russian citizens that were held in accounts in Western institutions. It hasn’t done so because it has no international legal basis for doing so, and if they did it would open up precedent for retaliation by every colonized country in the world to seize US assets. That money, however, while not seized, is still frozen, so from the Russian perspective it literally doesn’t matter because the assets are unusable while they remain frozen. The USA is not doing it because of a desire to maintain goodwill. They already collectively punished Russian citizens by freezing the assets. The seizure would create so much backlash from the rest of the world, it’s a self-preservation technique. Seizing assets in German institutions would actually violate the German constitution.

                You’re the one constantly trying to craft narratives from decontextualized facts. It blows my mind that you don’t see it.

                • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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                  6 months ago

                  Make up your mind. You don’t get to decide which facts matter and which don’t. Every fact you’ve thrown out has been devoid of the critical context

                  That’s 100% accurate, yes. What I’m saying is, I’m doing that now because you derisively rejected the idea of putting things in numerical context, or testing the overall picture against overall data. I’m glad you’re up to speed on what a waste of time it is to throw individual data points, in any number, at each other without context. Glad we’re agreed on it now.

                  It hasn’t done so because it has no international legal basis for doing so, and if they did it would open up precedent for retaliation by every colonized country in the world to seize US assets.

                  What was the international legal basis for keeping the planes?

                  Honestly, don’t answer that. I think the point is either made or it isn’t. I probably won’t continue after this; like I say, I think this style of argumentation is mostly a waste of time.

                  If I’m being real honest, I think you just like arguing. This whole thing started again when I came in more or less agreeing with you on a topic we should be roughly on the same side of, but you clearly don’t want that – I think you just want someone to play to role of your enemy so you can be hostile at them. That’s why you immediately abandoned the conversation about the atrocities in Gaza, when you got agreement about genocide against the Palestinians, and started coming back to Ukraine, so you can go on with yelling at me.

                  I kind of tried it out, like hey let me throw some zingers in about the Russians, but the whole thing feels stupid. I don’t know man. I’m just a person making sense of the world, and I like talking with people with all kinds of different points of view. If all you’re interested in is, well, this, then I’m not into it.

      • ComradeChairmanKGB@lemmygrad.ml
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        6 months ago

        For the rest of the world, it’s not difficult to keep the planes in the air, and it’s a huge deal when one suffers a malfunction.

        You mean how like every week another American fighter jet falls from the sky?

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        6 months ago

        It’s a good thing COMAC is a new contender for commerical aerospace- and Russia certainly has the means, even if it’ll have to rebuild and reinvigorate it a fair bit, to produce its own passenger aircraft as well.

        All you have here is WaPo drivel and speculation, and if you believe them about anything- much less anything regarding Russia, Palestine, China, etc… you’re a lost cause. This is basically on the same level as “Russians will have to resort to salvaging chips from their washing machines” nonsense- do you think that Russia, an industrialized nation whose legacy forms one half of the technological development of the cold war, is incapable of basic maintenance and repairs for their aircraft without western Aryan “benevolence?”

        Anyways, cheers to the UK no longer making steel. In a perfect world, perfidious Albion would never create steel again, not for a thousand years; considering what they have always done with any industrial capacity that came about on their damnable island, it is only fitting.

      • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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        6 months ago

        You should learn one day very soon to not trust anything the Washington Post says about anything, particularly enemies of the USA, outright. You don’t even need to read and critically break down these rags anymore. Ditto with every major new media, Wikipedia, NYT, the Guardian, they are no better than Epoch Times or Fox News at this stage of the collapse.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      6 months ago

      Why produce weapons and munitions yourself when you can just buy them from the US and enrich their military industrial complex? In fact from an American perspective, why does Europe need its own weapons industry at all? Better that they become fully dependent on the US, that way they are easier to control.

  • ComradeChairmanKGB@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    Reject steel, return to iron, embrace Anglo-Saxon tradition. Watch out Russia, the brits have 7th century military technology and they’re not afraid to use it.

    • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      If this decade ends with Brits making pig iron in makeshift furnaces in their back yards, I will take back every negative thing I’ve said about Sunak

    • JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
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      6 months ago

      embrace Anglo-Saxon tradition

      They should set “The Ruin” to music and make it the official UK anthem.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      6 months ago

      Indeed, western politicians appear to be utterly shocked by the fact that they can’t just wish factories and trained workers into existence from thin air.

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        6 months ago

        The crackerverse got a head start by doing a bunch of genocides and then looting the bones, but then proceeded to smugly sit at that point thinking they won. Everyone caught up, and now it’s starting to seem like they might actually have to give their illegitimate gains back.

    • SadArtemis@lemmygrad.ml
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      6 months ago

      It may be the result of capitalism, but there’s something incredibly right about Tata owning (and discontinuing) modern Britain’s steel production. Here’s hoping that in due time (and due collapse) Indian corporations come to own that whole wretched island, it would be only fitting and even then would pale in comparison to reparations owed.

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          6 months ago

          Not at all, save for the fact the power dynamics don’t allow them to drive the whole island into slavery, starvation, and disenfranchisement the way Britain did the subcontinent. If things reached anywhere near that level, or well before it, I would certainly care.

          This however? It may not be praxis, but I will certainly allow myself to not only enjoy seeing this, but cheer it on. The Brits deserve this and more, particularly as their island remains one of the champions of modern imperialism and exploitation worldwide. Notions of “sainthood,” “purity culture,” and all that nonsense be damned, I won’t stop myself from appreciating karmic justice (so long as it stays within the realms of what can be interpreted as justice) where it happens.

          • idkmybffjoeysteel [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            6 months ago

            I respect the sentiment and also long for the final destruction of the Empire but important to remember the only people ever affected negatively by the actions of capitalists are the working classes. Real justice would be unwinding the web of exploitative financial services, stripping the house of lords of all their honours, seizing their property to pay reparations, and sending them to labour camps.

            • SadArtemis@lemmygrad.ml
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              6 months ago

              As someone of the working classes living in the west- if it takes the destruction of the west’s working classes as well, to end the empire- in truth, so be it. I won’t play a part in it (as I’m not an accelerationist), but the majority of the world cannot, will not, and should not have to wait for the working classes in the imperial cores to rise up- and thankfully, things are moving rapidly in the direction of multipolarism and development of capable, determined resistance to the empire.

              The honest truth is that- more likely than not (though I’m not a defeatist, either) no change shall come in the imperial cores, till it is far too late. And when said change comes- I suspect more likely than not, it will first be marked by a long, brutal period of increasing fascism- I’d love to be proven wrong, and I don’t let it color my principles- but, while not being a “third-worldist,” I expect things will have to get far, far worse before they get better here, and that change will have to come from the global south and anti-imperialists like (even if by circumstance only) Russia.

              And FWIW- I would definitely rather see the imperial cores’ working classes decline further, than see our lot rebolstered by some revitalization of the empire and new flows of plunder and exploitation from the global south- that’s not accelerationism though, but simply that I don’t want my benefit to be at the expense of others- basically a “no” to the war economy, etc.

              • idkmybffjoeysteel [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                6 months ago

                Totally agree with all of that, just sad that things are getting worse and the only people benefiting from the decline in standard of living in the UK are billionaires, whether they are white or brown.

                I feel like it is a sign of declining empire, turning inwards due to reduced avenues for exploitation overseas, but I don’t know if that means anything right now. Maybe it’s nothing to do with declining empire at all, and due totally to self-destructive neolib brain worms.

                Like you say, we are probably going to descend into fascism first, and even after that it is a complete gamble what takes its place.

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          6 months ago

          They did fucked up Polish steel industry that remained after shock therapy, and by then the steel demand was rising globally so the industry was significantly modernised, but the neoliberal dogmatics sabotaged it for years.