To be fair, that’s exactly the kind of picture that would pop into my head given that prompt. Try to imagine that your nose doesn’t itch.

I bet some Chinese manufacturers wouldn’t object.

Someone should put together a deck of cards and sell them. Kinda like what they had in Iraq.

Sounds to me like a rationalization for what I suggested. I’m not saying they don’t believe it but, in my experience, the main predictor of what people believe is what they want to believe. People decide how they want to live, then construct a belief system to justify it.

I’ll check it out, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. When a social class sits outside the rules the rest of society is expected to live by, they get entitled and they get bored. Since they aren’t entirely immune to public opinion, they also become easy targets for blackmail as they push towards more and more “exclusive” forms of “entertainment”.

There has been lot of information released indicating Epstein’s child trafficking ring was barely impacted by his absence. He had lots of conspirators, most of whom are probably still at it, nevermind all of the Mossad, KGB, and CIA cooperation.

There is still a significant pro Ukrainian resistance operating in both Crimea and Donbas. Russian has had to resort to brutal tactics to suppress them, but has still not been entirely successful. Many of the resisters retreated to fight with the rest of Ukraine, and they are certainly giving Russia a fight. In any case, it’s still imperialism.

I see you have your cut and paste propaganda all ready to go there.

The people in Crimea and the Donbas wanted to join Russia, to protect them from Ukraine,

Sounds an awful lot like claiming Iraqis wanted the US to overthrow Sadam and would welcome it with open arms. It worked out about the same too, except for the Russian military embarrassing themselves. Even taken at face value, all you are doing is justifying the imperialism, not showing it doesn’t exist.

China is the biggest debt holder nation in the world. Zambia just had to default on loans for infrastructure that largely served Chinese needs, and Kenya and Ethiopia are not far behind. Meanwhile, the DRC is falling into debt paying for infrastructure to ship Copper and Cobalt to Chinese. China has not been as abusive as the west was, but they aren’t that much better either. It’s still the same tactics.

New Labor Forum: Chinese Investments in Africa: Twenty-First Century Colonialism?

Russia isn’t imperialist, it has no colonies nor neocolonies

Yeah, tell that to Crimea, the Donbas, or even Siberia or the puppet states like Belarus, Georgia and Moldova. Russian neo-colonialism is all over Africa.

China isn’t imperialist either, it’s a socialist country wituout any financial domination of the state or economy.

China is a kinder imperialist, but they are using largely the same playbook that the west used in Africa, including debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty and regulation, and undermining labor movements.

They also have a mix of socialism and capitalism, sometimes getting the best of both, and sometimes the worst. They definitely dominate the state economy through control of banking and the use of capital controls to direct funding to national priorities. The current real estate crisis and “ghost cities” are a pretty obvious example.

Tell us what a non-authoritarian leader of Venezuela would look like

Presumably they would look not-authoritarian, a description that doesn’t fit Maduro at all.

It could well be that, in the face of US policy regarding Venezuela, only an Authoritarian could hold onto the country. That still doesn’t make Maduro not an Authoritarian.

it seems to me that leftist leaders are always denounced as authoritarian by North American and European based NGOs and governments.

That’s a fair observation but, again, that doesn’t mean they are wrong when they say it about Maduro. Maduro is referred to as dictator by Human Rights Watch, the Organization of American States, and other human rights organizations, including some inside Venezuela.

Maduro is a dictator. It’s largely the fault of the US that Venezuela has a dictator. If the US succeeds in ousting Maduro, it will almost certainly replace him with an even worse Dictator. All of that can be true with no contradictions.

I would argue the same is true of Trump. It certainly was in his first term. This term has all the aesthetics of authoritarianism, but he is failing to consolidate power, which is kind of pathetic considering how much power in the US was ready to surrender on day one.

The gulf between the wealthy class and the rest of the country has reached the critical point where those with power see all of us as “foreign”. The imperialism is turning inwards.

The wealthy don’t even live in the same world we do, nevermind nation.

So did Brazil, and they actually threw theirs in prison.

One man doesn’t have to do everything. He is making space for those things to happen. Rent freezes and free transportation are at least cousins to mutual aid by my estimation, and they help free up resources in the community for members to do more. Again, one man, one role. Activists don’t make very effective politicians, and visa versa.

Who says he has to do it through purely electoral means? Why would you even assume that’s the plan? He’s a politician. The electoral part is where he fits in. That doesn’t mean he expects the rest of us to sit back and watch once he gets elected It’s never this approach or that, it’s everything.

Absolutely true. However, it hardly looks any better for Democrats. Bill Clinton is barely any better than Trump, and yet he is still revered in party circles.

Also, Democratic party elites have yet to back Mamdani in NY which is defacto support for Cuomo who has the same kind of track record.

This isn’t a Republican problem, it’s a wealthy elites problem.

I feel more sorry for those kids because they had Charlie Kirk as a father in the first place. I have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone that would marry that asshole.