Common Norm Finkelstein W.

Epstein and Dershowitz reach out to Finkelstein, he basically tells them to go fuck themselves, calls them pedos, and threatens to throttle them with his bare hands.

Compare that with 🤮 Chomsky…

What a racist name for a covert operation btw…

Great response!

All of that creates more poor people, not less.

there are lot’s of areas where Viet Nam desperately needs investment and modernization, but Viet Nam has this delusional “we’d rather go it alone” attitude towards China, but warmly embraces western investments of any kind

Many such cases in the global south, even in AES countries. Cuba is another example. A lot of problems could be solved by simply asking for help from either Russia or China, and i highly doubt they would refuse in most cases. But these governments do have to ask. They have to stop being so stubborn about it.

I think it’s a mix of genuine concern about presrving sovereignty (or i guess you could call it pride) and the government’s fear of being accused of or seen as being a proxy or a vassal to a country that has been heavily demonized by the Western media (which reaches citizens in these global south countries too, unfortunately). Especially if the Western propaganda already accused them of being too close to these countries, they wish to go out of their way to show, including to their own people, that these accusations are false.

It’s very unfortunate. One part of the solution is of course to reign in the West’s influence in the information space by establishing tighter control over foreign propaganda vectors, and building domestic alternatives for the media and online spaces. The other part is simply, unfortunately, time. The reason why Western investment is not seen in the same way as help from Russia or China, is because the West has been hegemonic for so long. Thus ties with the West are seen as “normal” and apolitical. But this is slowly changing as the West declines and China rises, and China becomes an indispensable part of global south economies.

There’s been talk about building a nuclear plant, but it would probably take 30+ years and pretty much no one believe it will ever happen. Not unless we accept a lot of help from China.

Or Russia. Russia arguably has the most expertise in the world on building nuclear power.

Economic decline correlated with an increase in state violence.

Precisely. Expect more violence as economic conditions continue to deteriorate.

It’s definitely not the sign of a confident and stable system.

On the official government level the relations are pretty good from what i can tell. There are also extensive economic ties between the two countries and a lot of Chinese investment. And what lingering animosity there still is at the level of the everyday people seems to be entirely one sided. I have never heard anything bad from the Chinese side about the Vietnamese.

All that’s to say that i think China and the Chinese people as a whole definitely would help Vietnam in case of a conflict with an outside power that doesn’t belong in the region.

Would they help in the case of a border conflict with a neighbor, something like the recent troubles between Cambodia and Thailand? I think in that case China would try to make sure there was peace as soon as possible. War causes instability and instability is bad for the kind of business China likes to do (very different model than the US which thrives off of wars and instability).

For some reason my comment double posted. I just noticed. Lol.

This is so unsurprising it barely qualifies as news. Of course the Vietnamese military is preparing for that possibility. That’s what militaries do. They prepare for every eventuality. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had contingency plans in case of war with Cambodia, or Laos, Thailand, China, the Philippines, or even Japan. And of course they view the US as belligerent, they were being invaded by the US only fifty years ago, and all can see that the US is a rogue declining empire that is lashing out at everyone.

Is it a likely scenario though? Probably not. It’s not impossible but it’s on the lower end of likelihood as far as which country the US will attack next. Still, always better to be prepared.

This is so unsurprising it barely qualifies as news. Of course the Vietnamese military is preparing for that possibility. That’s what militaries do. They prepare for every eventuality. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had contingency plans in case of war with Cambodia, or Laos, Thailand, China, the Philippines, or even Japan. And of course they view the US as belligerent, they were being invaded by the US only fifty years ago, and all can see that the US is a rogue declining empire that is lashing out at everyone.

Speaking of Schroedinger’s Russia, have you seen this:

The timing of it was impeccable, as Russia just launched one of the biggest missile strikes of the entire conflict immediately after the energy ceasefire expired.

This goes to show how unserious the Western media in general is about anything related to Russia.

*regime

This loser is now sitting in Ukraine taking credit for SBU terror attacks inside Russia along with the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps” (who are all Neonazis and wanted as criminals in Russia):

https://m.politnavigator.net/vlasovcy-ponomarjova-vzyali-na-sebya-terakt-sbu-v-pitere.html/amp

https://en.topwar.ru/212103-nahodjaschijsja-na-ukraine-jeks-deputat-gosdumy-inoagent-ponomarev-vyskazalsja-o-napadenii-terroristov-na-brjanskuju-oblast.html

Also, there is a ton of reporting - with witness testimonies - about the extent to which Ukraine, its government and its military (particularly the nationalist formations) are involved in human trafficking as well as organ trafficking.

Unfortunately most of that reporting is in Russian as the western media refuses to cover those sorts of stories (they used to do it a little before 2014, but now they all have gotten the order to cover up anything that reflects negatively on Ukraine).

Funnily enough there is actually a conspiracy theory going around right now in certain online circles where they apparently believe the exact opposite: that there are way less people on the planet than claimed - by something absurd like a factor of ten, lol - and that all the world’s governments are all conspiring to hide this. And they try to use photos of empty cities and “math” (i’m using the term extremely loosely here) to “prove” it. It’s flat earther levels of funny actually.

It’s natural selection at this point. States that do implement some form of nationalization, economic planning (this is not mutually exclusive with markets and private enterprise) and information domain sovereignty will survive the imperialist onslaught, and those who don’t won’t. Regardless whether they are Marxist or not. A nationalist anti-imperialist global south government can employ these methods as well and thereby turn their economy into a resilient war economy that can survive a prolonged siege. It’s not a matter of ideology, it’s a matter of pragmatism.

This is what Actually Existing Neoliberalism looks like in practice.

Huge own goal, if true. An epic fail, as the kids say.

I don’t know that a story which originated in the Telegraph is reliable, so take all of this with a grain of salt, but if true this is absolutely hilarious.

Everyone wants to think they’re special. Everyone wants to think they’re the exception. It can’t happen to them. This time it will be different.