If you follow EU politics, yes, otherwise, not really.

She’s Kaja Kallas, recently PM of Estonia and now the EU representative for foreign affairs. She’s a rabid Russophobe and excitable warhawk.

Varoufakis is just one of many people who have come up with fancy new terms for capitalism and imperialism. It’s not to say that he doesn’t have an important perspective on some things, but coming up with new terms for things defined over a century ago only serves to distract.

It’s a call for freedom from oppression and genocide, specifically in the Palestinian context. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Germany has decreed it hate speech.

Depending on who you believe, the remaining documents aren’t all that interesting, only go into more detail on things we already know, or require much more investigation to flesh out, but I’d rather judge that for myself. The whole thing is really suspicious, what with a Silicon Valley billionaire having bought the documents and eventually cutting access to them. Pierre Omidyar is far too close to the “deep state” to trust this kind of information with.

This gives a broad overview on the topic.

https://www.electrospaces.net/2019/04/the-snowden-files-where-are-they-and.html?m=1

It’s too bad most of the files he took out of the NSA will never see the light of day.

Do Germany’s collapsing industry and exploding cost of living signal its imminent demise?

- John Smith, a Californian who calls himself German cause his great-granddaddy was born there.

* This is a work of fiction and any similarity to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Yep. The founding fathers of the CIA were Wall Street fascists and Nazi friendos. Got a bunch of horrific Nazis out of any punishment whatsoever. There were even rumors that FDR wanted to charge Allen Dulles with treason for befriending a bunch of Nazi brass during the war. Good thing for Dulles, the CIA, and Wall Street that FDR kicked the can before then, and even better that they had organized for their man (Truman) to be VP that term.

Tldr: the CIA was started by Nazi-sympathetic US capitalists as an anti-communist organization.

In general white cishet westerners don’t know any social dynamic beyond the “in” group oppressing the “out” group (colonialism, settler-colonialism, slavery, capitalism, imperialism), so without targeted education, their imagination of different social structures can only be a projection of this assumed default state.

A bullet is cheaper than food, healthcare, and education.

Austerity submachine gun go brr.

Of course politicians are pro-money. You don’t get to be a politician in a capitalist country without being pro-money, wealthy, and well connected to others who are wealthy.

Bribery is in most cases legal in the US. It’s called lobbying, or campaign donations, or the revolving door between public service and private industry. It’s also an unsolvable problem given the current economic paradigm. The capitalist class will determine government policy in one way or another, as the government is designed to protect the interests of the capitalist class. The will of the working people is completely irrelevant.

Russian money, insofar as it does exist in US politics (there’s astonishingly little of it compared to other sources) is drawn to attention by a media that is owned by the same companies and people that are bribing in a much larger way. They call attention to the few thousand dollars a Russian immigrant may or may not have donated to the NRA or a Republican candidate to distract from the billions of dollars Wall Street spends on candidates and kickbacks to make sure they’re the ones who control US economic, financial, and foreign policy. It’s easy to call attention to Russian money because the same media has created an environment in which anything Russian is pure evil, so people don’t even question the content of the story being told. This has its roots in Cold War anti-Soviet propaganda, which has been dug up and repackaged to use against a post-2008 “non-aligned” modern Russia.

I never said these two things were related nor mutually exclusive.

I’ll be more explicit.

Russiagate was a work of fantasy telling a story about a supposed Manchurian candidate, rather than admitting that the Democratic campaign made mistakes and that Trump spoke to genuine issues the US population has (of course without solutions but that’s not the point here).

Bribes Campaign donations and favours are given to candidates and office holders all the time by interest groups, companies, and wealthy individuals. A donation by JP Morgan or a Koch has nothing to do with the Russiagate fairytale.

Russiagate is a made up conspiracy theory and US politicians are bribed lobbied all the time from all sorts of wealthy interest groups.

It’s not whataboutism. I’m not comparing anything. I’m simply pointing out that children are actually not safer by supporting the Kiev regime.

Republicans aren’t pro-Russia. Some just think war against Iran or China is a higher priority.

You mean this Ukraine?

https://mronline.org/2022/07/12/the-ukrainian-army-is-murdering-the-donbass-children-with-the-help-and-approval-of-the-west/

A shocking number of people are cool with that.

Not only did the American ruling class inspire the Nazis, they consciously chose to create the economic conditions that lead to inter-war fascist movements.

Given how corrupt the non-indicted elected officials are, it clearly does take something cartoonish like gold bars to pique the interest of a prosecutor.

Obligatory Red Sails: https://redsails.org/really-existing-fascism/

I could write my own essay on why the US is fascist and has been since at least 1945 and maybe I will one day, but this will do for now.

In fact my essay may indeed argue that “liberal democracy” is indeed fascism.

This last bit comes up in way too many of my conversations. Even ostensibly anti-imperialist decolonial types will throw in the idea that China is can only be acting in Africa because they are benefitting from it, so it isn’t a positive development. Even the fact that African partners are getting genuinely important things out of these arrangements doesn’t make the material difference between Chinese diplomacy and imperial extraction clear.