Did the Nazis show this much disgusting glee at their atrocities?

Many of them absolutely did, yes. As did their enthusiastic collaborators in the Baltics, Ukraine, Croatia, etc.

I don’t know if it’s intentional, but it looks to me like Russia and China are playing out a sort of “bad cop, good cop” dynamic. Russia articulates the more uncompromising anti-imperialist position while China tries to court US vassals away with diplomacy and trade deals. Just because a lot of Arab states are US vassals now doesn’t mean they have to stay that way forever.

There are some that i think are too far gone and beyond salvation (like UAE), but i do think that as the position of the US weakens and associating with it becomes more of a liability than an advantage, as countries see that the US only brings chaos and instability while China offers stability and prosperity, some of them can be peeled away from the vassal system that the US has built.

Even in Europe - which imo will be the last holdouts clinging to the dying empire out of racist/colonial solidarity - there are some countries that before long i can see abandoning the sinking NATO ship and jumping on the BRICS train. All it will take is a little regime change, which may come quicker than we expect if the current crisis really blows up and becomes utterly catastrophic in Europe.

China, as usual, is playing the long game. Even if doing so means making some “dirty” compromises in the short term.

Treatlerite

That’s very interesting that they have managed to build up such resilience to oil shocks. Admittedly i was thinking more along the lines of having a lot of renewables, and yes, coal, as alternatives. Strategic reserves and price controls too, but i see those as temporary measures. Export bans are a good idea. Also i am wondering how Russian oil and gas exports figure into the equation. If they redirect what they used to export to Europe to now flow to China, is that enough to replace Gulf oil for China?

Yeah, the rest of East Asia is going to be hit pretty hard by the oil crisis. I’m just saying I found it a bit odd to say that “Asian factory activity is slowing down” when the biggest Asian factory of all, China, is not slowing down. Sort of leaving out the most important part there.

Though in a global recession most likely even China will be affected because there will be less global demand.

The sooner the Zionist Arab Emirates are put down the better.

Never underestimate the power of western liberal brainwashing. DPP voters still seem to be living in a world where US power will protect them indefinitely.

This Zionist running dog’s days are numbered. It’s only a matter of time until his masters turn on him.

Is Chinese factory activity slowing down though? Afaik their energy prices have remained pretty stable, so i can’t imagine that they would see much impact. And they make up basically the majority of “Asian factory activity”, everyone else is a footnote.

Maybe if demand collapses as a result of economic crisis in Europe…

Completely reasonable and natural for the two countries on either side of the strait to have control over it. Yemen and Djibouti should do the same with the Bab El-Mandeb.

Can confirm this is unfortunately very common. I see a lot of people just scroll through news on their phones, liking and sharing article after article based on headline alone without even bothering to actually click on it and read a single word. It’s like you’re watching zombies.

Unfortunately this is largely wasted effort. It will fall on deaf ears as the population of the US is pre-conditioned by the Zionist aligned media to dismiss any Iranian statements.

His time would have been better spent drafting letters to the people and governments of global south countries.

Then again, what does Pezeshkian even do? Seriously, he seems completely useless and might as well not even be there.

So i guess they’re just keeping him busy writing letters almost no one will even bother to read and making statements that no one takes seriously.

Whenever you see seemingly inexplicable sympathy for the Zionist entity in an African country it is one of two things: either economic ties to the entity, or pervasive influence of Christian Zionism (or a mixture of both).

Like Germans saying they are proud of Auschwitz…

To whoever needs to hear this: before you downvote because of the title, please read the article first.

All of this simply shows that conditions have not yet deteriorated to a sufficient point where people in the imperial core are forced to develop class consciousness en masse. There is still too much comfort, it is still possible to go on as if nothing is happening because it’s not yet a life or death situation for most people. The good news is that this will change. As the empire loses more and more battles and begins to recede and turn inward, and as the global south rises alongside China, the possibility for extraction of super profits with which to bribe imperial core populations will dwindle. At that point the labor aristocracy of the imperial core will slide into true proletarianization and existential precariousness which will force an awakening.

TL;DR: you have to look at things dialectically. Everything is in a state of flow and change. What is true today will not necessarily be true tomorrow.

Well, misinformation at least is a real word. It just means factually wrong information. “Disinformation” is the double-speak term made up by western governments to censor factual information that they don’t like.

Same.

I’m curious to see where the sci-fi element comes in. For now a couple of thoughts:

Still, he buckled to the decision that was reached democratically by his girlfriend and kids, in much the same way - he thought to himself - as Western parliaments were able to reach majority decisions entirely without prior investigation, discussion, or compromise.

This passage seems a little forced. Is there any particular reason why the character would think of how Western parliaments operate? Does he have an interest in comparing political systems? Otherwise i see no reason to bring it up. I would also perhaps steer away from the phrase “was reached democratically” and instead say something like “reached by majority consensus”.

When including a political/ideological message in a work of fiction you want it to be a little more subtle. Directly using terms that you would in an explicitly political setting like this space for example comes off as heavy-handed. Already the tongue-in-cheek allusion to majoritarian democracy is clear from the preceding sentence. There is no need to press the point this much.

Shanghai was incredibly pleasant to get around with its state-of-the-art public transit system, but foregoing the purchase of a mostly useless family car sometimes meant having to carry heavy bags of towels, sunshades, and other miscellanea all the way to the beach.

Is there any reason why they wouldn’t or couldn’t take a taxi/Didi? And is the story set in the present or the future? If it’s the future then you could include flying taxi services. Already it looks like they might not be too far away from becoming a reality in China sometime in the next decade or two.

Xing, four semesters ahead, was earning some cash teaching her class about calculus and deductive reasoning, and after she graduated a few years later, she returned the favour by teaching him about the wonders of human reproductive biology.

This might just be me being a bit prudish but i don’t find this joke funny. It sort of gives me the ick. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just me who finds this off-putting.

The extra mischief the twins would enjoy causing by looking alike was offset by a sort of harmony which only that same symmetry could provide; currently materialising in the precious sight of them working on a little dam to back up some water from the river.

I wouldn’t use a semi-colon here. Standard practice is to have what follows a “;” be a grammatically complete sentence, but you are missing a verb there. Actually i would recommend that you have someone do a quick edit at some point with an eye on the punctuation choices because there’s several spots where it’s not quite right.

In the small, shallow channel leading up to the dam, Xing was fascinated by an effect he had recently learned that linear mathematics could not explain: He dipped a little plastic shovel into the channel

I am having a little trouble visualizing the geometry here. The family is at the beach by the riverside, yes? What channel is being talked about here that a dam is being built on? Who dug this channel? How big is it? Does it run parallel to the river? Perhaps in the previous paragraph there should be a description of what the channel looks like that was dug, i assume, by the children in the beach next to the river.

Otherwise I think this is a good start to the story. Looking forward to reading more.