Boise_Idaho [null/void, any]

rotato-chip Capital city of Idaho rotato-chip

  • 0 Posts
  • 79 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: January 8th, 2024

help-circle

  • Things aren’t looking good in Cuba:
    https://xcancel.com/bellybeastcuba/status/1929158797173371202

    Cuba’s population has declined nearly 13% from 2020 through 2024, according to recently released data by the island’s National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI). In 2024, the population was 9.7 million, 1.4 million less than in 2020.

    Cuba has been going through its largest emigration wave in history, as people flee a deepening economic crisis fueled by U.S. sanctions. The U.S. is by far the largest recipient of Cuban immigrants. Unofficial reports have put Cuba’s population loss at even higher numbers.

    The long-term damage of the emigration crisis can be catastrophic for the island, since thousands of young people, and particularly young professionals, are part of the wave.

    Cuba’s education, health and scientific sectors are facing personnel shortages. It is even more alarming considering Cuba’s aging patterns, to which low birth rates also contribute. Cuba’s around 71,358 births in 2024 are the country’s lowest in 65 years.

    ONEI’s report points out that more than 25% of the population is over 60 years old, making Cuba one of the fastest-aging countries in Latin America.




  • People here are talking as if 80% of the Zionist entity’s economy is reliant on China. At the end of the day, the Zionist entity is just an extension of the US. It’s not a normal country that is subject to normal pressures a country would face. The US will simply foot the bill (or force their vassals to foot the bill) for whatever economic void that a potential Chinese economic sanction would cause.

    What sustains the Zionist entity is weapons and the vast majority of weapons shipped to the Zionist entity is from the West, with the West even using sheepdipped “mercenaries” to murder Palestinians. China trading regular consumer goods and investing in infrastructure isn’t the same at all. But once the Zionist entity has no more access to Western weapons, it is toast. The question then becomes:

    • What action(s) would force the US to drop military support of the Zionist entity?

    The actions would have to militarily and economically cost the US to the point where it has to drop the Zionist entity since we’re well past the point of questioning whether the US sees the political costs as meaningful (it does not).

    For military costs, you have direct military costs in the sense of Ansarallah attacking US ships, but there’s also the intensification of current military fronts and opening of new military fronts. Quite simply, if the US is fighting too many wars at once, there will be triaging since it’s geopolitically wiser to invest your resources in a few fronts that you can win versus spreading out your investments and losing them all. The IOF is an exceptionally incompetent and cowardly military, so the US has to spend more relative to other vassal militaries. I suppose there’s also the case of domestic unrest that would require a military response. In the very unlikely possibility of violent domestic unrest in the US that’s fueled by the US’s support of the Zionist entity, triaging might lead to the US cutting support for the sake of restoring domestic stability.

    For economic costs, I don’t mean how many trillions of dollars of arms the US spends on the Zionist entity. I mean more like the Axis of Resistance targeting oil refineries in the Gulf states and destroying the economic wealth of the entire WANA region. There’s also cutting access to crucial resources for the US. And the elephant in the room is of course China which has the means of waging direct economic warfare with the US.

    For the US to drop the Zionist entity, I think these need to happen simultaneously:

    1. The Axis of Resistance broadens the front and begin targeting comprador regimes. Perhaps Iran needs to directly wage kinetic warfare with the US. This will militarily and economically cost the US.

    2. Russia intensifies the Ukrainian front, with Putin larping as the Putler carricature that liberal media portray him as. This will militarily cost the US.

    3. China wages economic warfare against the US and do all the dedollarization stuff that Shipwreck chastises China for not doing. This will economically cost the US.

    This is, of course, what a precursor for WWIII would look like. But perhaps people are just in denial about WWIII not happening and the bandaid should just be pulled off.








  • I think most of you young people don’t realize that while it’s fun to wreck your body when you’re young

    And I think you don’t realize how terrible it is to work when you’re 60+. And I’m not talking about some pampered white-collar job like a general manager. I mean an actual worker like a chef or a construction worker. Can you imagine a 65 year old roofer or a 65 year old plumber?

    Your body being wrecked gets factored into your healthy life expectancy. And unless you dispute the numbers of the WHO, Chinese workers enjoy a healthy retirement longer than Danish workers.

    No matter how pampered your body is, your body will show noticeable physical and mental deterioration when you reach 60 regardless of how easy of a life you had. This is just biological fact. Danish life expectancy isn’t 100, so a lot of Danish people won’t even make it to 70, whether dying from fatal accidents or disease. They won’t get to enjoy their retirement.




  • Definitely 1 and I question anyone who would pick otherwise. Retiring at 70 in Denmark means only being able to enjoy 1 year of healthy retirement before spending the rest of your life being stricken with some debilitating illness. It also demonstrates how even a cushier socdem state like Denmark sees its workers as completely disposable and “rewards” them with retirement only when they reach their healthy life expectancy where they can no longer be milked for their labor. China at least cares about their workers enjoying some form of healthy retirement.

    And as a final point, I don’t know a whole lot of people who died before hitting 55 or 60, but I know plenty of people who didn’t make it past 70. Just from extended family alone, I could think of at least 5 relatives who didn’t make it.





  • If, as communists, we’re going to label a left-wing nationalist organisation which originated as part of a Marxist-Leninist organisation as a “proxy for the US” because they’re fighting against a right-wing Islamist government that occasionally fires a missile at israel (but sits idly by while the entity continues to starve millions of people, and did effectively nothing to help Hezbollah when it mattered the most), then what are we even doing anymore?

    That “right-wing Islamist government” did more than almost every other country and group, including the Kurdish nationalists you’re defending. At the end of the day, Kurdish nationalists have a curious tendency of aligning themselves with Western imperialism that stretches back decades. Killing Hope by William Blum outlines the repeated pattern of Kurdish nationalists aligning themselves with Western interests only to be thrown under the bus only to continue aligning themselves with Western interests only to be thrown under the bus again. At this point, they are either US proxies or demonstrate such sheer incompetence in understanding what the primary contradiction is that it slides towards malevolence. Whether through malice or idiocy, they should be treated as an obstacle by actual competent anti-imperialist forces. You don’t get points just because your intentions are true.