This excellent information! Should probably be its own post, especially the part about the “Which Path to Persia” think tank paper. Anyone following what is happening with Iran needs to read it, just like anyone following Russia-Ukraine needs to read RAND’s “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”.
My father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate says it was 100,000!
The good news is that there is no space in the Netherlands for large vineyards. The useable land is already full with tulips and the rest is marsh.
Italy looks to be hit the hardest. Southern Romania also not looking well, but at least they can make up for it with gains in Transylvania.
Cyprus not working out for them? Or they just can’t get enough of taking over and settling other people’s land?
Preparing a plan B in case things go south in occupied Palestine?
Probably not. You can see women without any head covering even in the pro-government rallies that are currently happening. Especially in the big cities it is not uncommon to see that fairly regularly.
Now, rural areas, sure they tend to be more conservative and therefore it is more likely to encounter repression there around this issue, but it’s not the government doing it, it’s the families and local community.
Ideal? No. But far from what is claimed in western propaganda.
Comrade Cowbee has been doing truly wonderful work 🫡
Putting up the Great Firewall has been the best decision China made in the 21st century. It has been vindicated a thousand times over.
Maybe the user in question deleted their post themselves.
One of his better posts imo.
I highly recommend the book “This Soviet World” by Anna Louise Strong from 1936
Seconded. That is an excellent book.
Western protest culture elevates these managed spectacles into moral absolutes while systematically marginalizing forms of struggle that actually threaten power. That’s not neutral; it actively disarms movements by teaching people that symbolic display and sanctioned outrage are the peak of political action. Naming that isn’t disrespectful to those who suffer within these protests, it’s a necessary critique of a model that reproduces defeat while insisting it represents resistance.
Well said!
For those unfamiliar with early communist writings: whenever Lenin uses the term “Social-Democracy” he basically means communism. “Social Democracy” only came to have the meaning we understand it to have today with the split in the Second International and WWI when the European Social Democrats betrayed the working class.
I agree. They would have gotten more out of making a deal with Maduro. The problem with that is that they would have lost face. They were too invested and couldn’t back down.
Everyone is trying to find some sort of grand strategic plan behind this whole episode, but maybe the reason why this looks like such a short sighted, poorly thought out strategic blunder, is because it was more about domestic politics.
Trump’s approval rating has been in rapid decline, and he needed to do something that would re-energize the base, give them a “win” and make himself look tough.
I mean, Clinton bombed Serbia right after the Monica Lewinsky scandal…
Luckily there are still some countries in Europe where hustle culture will have a really hard time catching on. I can’t imagine Spain, Greece or southern Italy going for it. Even in most of the Balkans it’s a tough sell, we’re just not built that way, lol.
Smoked is good too.
Let’s not jump straight to blaming Europe’s warmongering tendencies on climate. The Romans were pretty warmongering too and they came from a very mild climate where they have generally quite good food these days.
Though the demand for spices was an important part of the initial driving motivation of European colonialism it’s not the full picture.
Food is one thing - it can be quite logically connected to climate and what you can grow where - but i think that applying this same geographic determinism to macro-historic trends is a bit too simplistic.
Taste is totally subjective so you are absolutely entitled to that opinion. I will concede however that an aged Gouda can be decent.
They are if the year is 1637