Russian troops were in the Crimea back when British redcoats were stationed in New York City, so I don't know exactly when this "seizure" of the Crimea by Russia is supposed to have happened.

Taiwan is Kinmen island, which sits inside the harbor of the city of Xiamen in mainland China. The PRC, the US and the Taipei government all recognize Taiwan and the mainland as the same country. So I don't know how or why "we" would try to stop the Standing Committee from going into Taiwan - the island in their own harbor.

Kind of a laugh to look at the shock of a "payoff' by Russia, when the US is doing bigger payoffs to countries all around the world.

So if the Redcoats were to come back to New York today, and started acting like they ran the place, they wouldn't be "seizing" anything, but rather just going back to the place they once were, is what you seem to be saying. Or if they did "seize" it, you wouldn't know when it was supposed to have happened.

The Russuan military was, and has been, in the Crimea since before that.

Does that mean they can go back and occupy it anytime they want to?

Much of this essay is baffling to me.

From 2022 to 2023 the fed funds rate was jacked up. The aim of doing this was to, among other things, drive up unemployment, so that more working class people working in supermarkets and the like would become unemployed, and to increase food scarcity for their families. The rate rise affects us as well, with tech hiring somewhat dead since late 2022.

Looking abroad - the International Criminal Court charged Netanyahu, Israel fires on and invades UN bases in Lebanon, Israeli television broadcasts Israeli soldiers raping in Sde Teiman (go look on YouTube for the footage) as rabbis and Knesset MPs swarm to defend them. Gazan children starve as European countries block weapons being sent to Israel. In the US, Biden sends troops abroad and Israel weapons to further the slaughtering, which has spread to the West Bank, Yemen, Syria, Iran and Lebanon. Also, the US vetoes at the UNSC effectively help block Gazan children being fed as they starve. Kamala Harris backs Biden and vows to continue arming and funding Netanyhu doing this, and Trump is even more belligerent. So Americans elected the person enabling this and over 98% who vote will vote for a candidate doing this.

It is not a lack of care or attention to Gazan children, Americans, or 98% of those who vote are paying attention to Gazan children and are trying to starve them - or at least are willing to trade a specific tax cut or whatnot to enable their starvation.

There's nothing about lack of individual or scaled care - the vast majority of Americans work for the opposite - to continue the famine.

Going back to the point of scale - the <2% of people not voting for candidates arming Israel and continuing the Gazan famine are working together as a mass movement and at scale and many for, as the essay mentioned, "socialism", because this <2% has to coordinate and work together against the 98% who are actively pursuing the famine in Gaza, or who are neutral about it and willing to trade support for it for a tax cut and such.

Gazan children don't starve because Americans don't pay individual or scaled attention to Gazan children. They starve because 98% of Americans will vote for someone who works to starve them. It is what the vast majority of Americans are and what America is. And works for domains outside Gaza - like unemployment and the fed funds rate mentioned.

Saying, "Social Security beneficiaries receive more than they paid in..." indicates you don't know what you are talking about. And, believe it or not, Social Security does invest money.

And yes, it does salvage the argument. Defense spending (all of it not just DOD) is the largest expense of the government. This is expected when you are the hegemon.

It's simply an enormous, vast economy, and 13% of a vast economy is a huge number, large enough to outspend the next several countries combined. That's all.

You are absolutely wrong in your belief. Defense spending is roughly 50% of discretionary spending.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59729

You could change the law to axe social security, keep its highly-regressive tax, and instead use that to pay for other stuff—but lots of things are possible with a change in the law, and that’s not possible now without such a change. That’s not something that can happen as an ordinary part of the budgeting process.

You tend to only see it included when the full total of money disbursed by the government from any pot and for any purpose is expressly relevant (it’s usually not) or in writing that is not aimed at policy nerds, but at everyday voters (to convince them whatever batshit crazy spending we’re doing in the author’s preferred non-social-spending item isn’t bad after all, usually)

States can endure a lot of mismanagement. Look at North Korea for instance. What we won't know is when we hit the breaking point.

What is happening in Russia may lead to an eventual collapse, though unlikely. There are some signs of a loss of monopoly on violence as the system is pushed to its breaking point. Hopefully that won't happen, but it's a scary possibility nonetheless.

For the second, I don't know anything about it

For the Uighurs, there are allegations of 25.000 murders a year for organ harvesting in the Xinjiang.

I guess the workers doing the work and creating the wealth are lucky that Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt etc. illegally conspired to do wage-fixing so that they and the heirs they work for could get more of the wealth that others created.

He and his wife sent money to a school educating Arabs seven years ago, and you stretch that to mean he supports the Zionist monsters slaughtering children right now in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and filming rapes in Sde Teiman, which are then broadcast on Israeli TV (go watch it on Youtube if you want), after which the Zionist rapists are praised by rabbis and Knesset members. I see nothing connecting Ambros to that sick behavior.

Or in other words, I'd argue that many of the jews (probably not all) involved in this school (I wont speak for the arabs), view what its doing as a requirement for zionism and to rectify failures of zionism in the past, but that they don't view themselves as not zionist. (there are also arabs in Israel who are bigger zionists than some of the jews, one only has to go to druze villages in the Galilee to see this)

But it goes beyond that, this school system has been lauded by the "zionist" state. Yea, there are those in the country who hate "coexistence" schools like it (one can only look at the arson that took place a decade or so ago), but the fact that its actively supported and lauded by the state that you seem to think it rejects. Or in different terms, if one views anyone that supports the continued existence of the state of israel to be a zionist, I don't see how one can't consider this school to be "zionist" (and therefore, anyone supporting it, is supporting a "zionist institution".

Of course, one can also not be willing to say everyone that supports the continued existence of the state of israel to be a zionist, but that doesn't quite fit with you wanting to paint all zionists with the broad brush that you do. In regards to that broad brushing, I'd argue that the palestinians and arabs in general should then be painted with the same brush, because they have done the exact same things and many of their leaders have praised the exact same things. If you're not willing to paint them with the same brush, why are you willing to paint jews/zionists as a while with that brush?

Personally, I'm not willing to paint all palestinians with such a brush, so IMO your broad brush strokes reflects more on the you, than on Israel.

All the above isn't to say that either of these people support what the state of Israel is doing, but many unabashed zionists also criticize the state for its failings. I don't quite get why to some, sins of the state of israel (or zionism in general) are prooftexts to the zionism/israel being illegitimate, but to those same exact people, very similar sins done in the name of palestinian nationalism, don't brand it illegitimate. In practice (from my biased view point, used more in the statistical sense, because of what I've been exposed to, than in the prejudice sense), I see much more self criticism within the zionist movement from its inceptions till modern times that I see within palestinian nationalism (but again, thats because I'm exposed to much more aspects of zionism). And even with that biased belief, I try to deal with respect with any person who believes in palestinian nationalism and deal with them as an individual and not paint them with the broad brush strokes (though, in all honesty, I don't always succeed, as well as realizing that if they can't deal with me an individual and therefore view me as guilty of all the crimes they might place on the state, there's no where to even start a conversation, so its better to just move on, as any argument is just going to create confirmation bias (in this case more related to prejudice) in me going forward impacting how I relate to others.

I don’t think that’s the correct definition of Zionism. Zionism is Jewish nationalism, the belief that Jews are a nation and that as a nation they ought (at least in principle) to have their own state. A person can reject that belief, yet nonetheless support the continued existence of Israel as a practical matter, on the grounds that now that it exists, its destruction would cause greater overall human suffering than its continuation in existence in some form.

To give a parallel - a person doesn’t have to be a Czech nationalist to support the continued existence of Czechia. They may simply believe that allowing Czechia to remain in existence is pragmatically going to result in less human suffering than destroying it. That doesn’t require one to believe that Czechia has some abstract “right to exist”.

A consistent anti-nationalist opposes all forms of nationalism, including Zionism. But at the same time they may support the maintenance of the existence of many or all current states, even if those states were originally founded out of nationalism, so long as their reason for that support is pragmatic/utilitarian rather than based on nationalist principle.

And even a person who is a nationalist, isn’t required to be a nationalist of every nation - a person might be an Irish nationalist but not a Czech nationalist or a Zionist. An Irish nationalist might favour the continued independence of Ireland on nationalist grounds, while taking the same position with respect to Israel or Czechia on purely utilitarian/pragmatic non-nationalist grounds

Also, Haredi religious anti-Zionists aren’t opposed to a Jewish state in the land of Israel in principle, they just believe it was wrong to seek to establish it secularly, as opposed to waiting for the Messiah to do so. And yet, most of them, despite being opposed to the current State of Israel’s existence in principle, also oppose active attempts to harm its existence in practice. Yes, there are the extremists of Neturei Karta (NK) who will openly consort with Israel’s enemies, infamously attended the Tehran Holocaust denial conference, regularly support pro-Palestine protests - but most Haredi anti-Zionists aren’t like that. Satmar and its allies (Edah HaChareidis in Israel, the Central Rabbinical Conference in the US), who vastly outnumber NK, reject Zionism as an ideology, but simultaneously reject all cooperation with non-Jewish groups that threaten Israel’s physical safety-indeed, they’ve put NK under a cherem (excommunication) for doing so. They oppose the contemporary State of Israel’s existence in principle, but they also oppose any active efforts to harm its existence in practice, because they put high value on Jewish lives, and they see the latter as a threat to Jewish lives

1) I don't think your limitation of zionism to simply "nationalism" is correct. As I wrote, there were many self described "zionists" (especially in pre-state days) who weren't "jewish nationalists", i.e. their goal wasn't specifically a jewish state, but jewish settlement in a binational state, i.e. their goal was the return of the jewish people to their indigenous homeland, the birthplace of the culture and peoplehood). By restricting it to jewish nationalism (to the exclusion of others), one limits what zionism means.

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_Shalom_(political_organiz... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihud for examples of "dissident" zionist thought in pre-state days.

2) while I agree that one doesn't have to be a "nationalist" (in a pejorative view of the term) to support the continued existence of an existing state. I think most people who actively support Israel (and institutions in Israel) are not simply being "pragmatic" about that doing that is because its less human suffering, they view that its continued existence is a net positive to the world.

to rephrase the concept, with your next paragraph of "consistent anti-nationalists". Yea, one can oppose all forms of nationalism, but if one considers themselves a "consistent ant-nationalist opposed to all forms of nationalism", but supports palestinian nationalism / excuses violence as valid forms of "resistance", I'd argue that one isn't a "consistent anti-nationalist". i.e. I personally see very few "consistent anti-nationalists".

I also agree that one doesn't have to be a consistent "nationalist" per the next paragraph. I'm certainly not. If one wants to claim that that they aren't "anti-nationalist", but that they simply value palestinian nationalism over jewish nationalism, I get that.

In terms of Hareidi religious anti-zionism

1) outside of satmar affiliated ones, they don't have a consistent view of what it means to be anti-zionist today (i.e. I'd argue that they are more non-zionist jewish nationalists, vs anti-zionist).

2) Even with satmar, to many people who are virulent opponents of Israel (ex: who view zionist as a pejorative), they would view Satmar members, as you describe their philosophy (or opposing any efforts to harm the states existence) as "zionists".

In practice, i believe this demonstrates, that "zionism" (to people virulenty opposed to the state of Israel) is just a code word for anti-semitism, and is just a safe way for people to demonstrate their anti-jewish animus, and therefore further demonstrates the necessity of the modern state of Israel. In practice, I see very little "anti-israel" protests that don't devolve into such usages.

If some binationalists want to call themselves "Zionists", it isn't my place to tell them they can't call themselves that. But other binationalists disagree. For example, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (professor of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University) is a binationalist, and I've read some of his writings, and he is rather critical of Zionism, and presents binationalism more as an alternative to Zionism than as a form of it.

I don't agree that donating money to a school in Israel aimed at promoting peaceful Arab-Jewish coexistence necessarily implies any particular position on whether the State of Israel should exist. If someone donated money to a school in Northern Ireland promoting peaceful Catholic-Protestant coexistence, I wouldn't assume that donation implied any particular position on the future constitutional status of Northern Ireland (whether it should remain part of the UK, or become part of a united Ireland, or even some third option such as shared sovereignty or independence).

I agree that a consistent antinationalist can't support Palestinian nationalism, but I think such people exist. I already mentioned Raz-Krakotzkin. In principle, I support neither Zionism nor Palestinian nationalism, but nowadays my own emotional sympathies are more with the Israeli side. That said, I get annoyed by Zionist language such as "Israel's right to exist" because frankly speaking I don't think any state has a "right to exist". But saying that doesn't mean I support the dreams some have of "dismantling" Israel–I think that would very likely end in genocide

I don't think non-Satmar-affiliated Haredim are being "inconsistent". Both sides agree that the establishment of the secular State of Israel was a mistake, but now it exists, it is a fait accompli, and it would be wrong to permit its enemies to destroy it. Where they disagree, is on how far one can permissibly go in relating to it (such as by accepting money from it or participating in its elections). I don't think either camp is being inconsistent, they just have a difference of moral and halachic opinion. There are similar debates–over how far you can go in compromising with a practical reality which you believe to be ultimately wrong–in other religions too.

Finally, I don't think we should allow the word "Zionist" to be defined by those who use it as a pejorative. People who rant about "Zionist Occupation Government", etc, are just using "Zionist" as a codeword for "Jewish", in order to obscure their own antisemitism. They aren't saying anything useful, and so should just be ignored. But non-pejorative critics of Zionism, from Joel Teitelbaum to Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, are worth listening to, whether they ultimately are right or wrong.

I'd differentiate this chareidi "zionism" that we see practiced from "religious" zionism in that their zionism is more secular, without ascribing religious significance to the state. i.e. while the "religious zionism" sector ascribes religious, messianic, meaning to the state and hence would suffer an internal rupture if the state would fall, the chareidim whose "zionism" I'd argue is more simply "secular/national" would simply view it as part of the ebb and flow of jewish history.

There are Haredi Religious Zionists, the Hardal - in particular the followers of Rabbi Zvi Thau, his students at the Har Hamor Yeshiva he founded in Jerusalem, and the Noam political party for which he serves as spiritual leader.

But although the term “Hardal” has only been heard in recent decades, there has always been a “very frum” subset of Religious Zionism. There is a direct line going from Rabbi Zvi Thau, to the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem where Thau held a leadership position for decades before splitting off to found his own yeshiva, to Thau’s mentor Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, and in turn to his mentor’s father and the founder of Mercaz HaRaz, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine.

Among the strictly Orthodox (“Haredi”), although Satmar-style hardline anti-Zionism and “non-Zionism” (which can be interpreted as “soft anti-Zionism”) have traditionally been the clear majority, there has always been a Religious Zionist minority, going back to the early 20th century. Religious Zionism has always contained a spectrum of observance from Haredi-style strictness through to “dati lite” laxity. So some of the people you are talking about were arguably “proto-Hardal” or “Hardal avant la lettre”

Complicating the matter is there has definitely been some movement in recent decades from the “non-Zionist”/“soft anti-Zionist” camp to Religious Zionism. A good example is the Sephardic Haredi party Shas, who used to identify as “non-Zionist” but in 2010 decided to join the World Zionist Organisation. Or similarly, Chabad is still technically “non-Zionist”, but with every passing year their “non-Zionism” appears ever harder to distinguish from actual Zionism. (But, keeping in mind that the Chabad of shluchim in Chabad houses is rather different from the Chabad of Crown Heights and Kfar Chabad, I’m not sure if that generalisation is equally true of both.)

Conversely, however, United Torah Judaism and Agudath Israel haven’t really changed their position - they still reject both secular Zionism and religious Zionism in principle, but are willing to engage in certain forms of cooperation with the State of Israel in practice. Rather than moving like Shas and Chabad have, they are staying where they are. In fact, I think the recent ratcheting up of the long-standing controversy in Israel over Haredi conscription is encouraging them to dig-in to their current position. (Although interestingly even Shas, despite embracing Religious Zionism on paper, is still opposing conscription for its followers, and urging them to engage in civil disobedience against it.)

Except most of these other definitions don't really matter to the current situation, right?

The one that does matter is Herzl's of course, which is the one that the State of Israel unequivocally operates on. More specifically the Jabotinskyian variants that have been the foundation of its consensus policy since 1967 (and much more firmly so since Begin).

Another example of "non-standard Zionism" was Canaanism [0], a 1940s outgrowth of Revisionist Zionism that wanted a Hebrew nationalism rather than a Jewish nationalism, and sought to include Arab Christians and Muslims on the condition that they start speaking Hebrew instead of Arabic, and adopt a new "Hebrew" ethnic identity in place of their pre-existing "Arab" one. But despite having significant influence on the development of Israeli art and Israeli literature, politically Canaanism was always a minuscule irrelevancy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanism

What you call a Marxist system is something that Marx said could only work in the most advanced country if it was ready for it, which in that time was Germany. He said such a system would not work elsewhere.

So what form of Marxism failed? Even Lenin, who many Marxists did not consider Marxist, was a Marxist enough to say that Russia would not establish communism. That the Russian self-described Marxists had the chance to take power in Russia and they took it. That Lenin wanted to take power in early 1917 came as a surprise to Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev etc., in fact Trotsky was not even with Lenin then. It surprised them because it was not a Marxist idea. Then Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, i.e. capitalism. Then he died.

Marx clearly spelled out what not to do, and some did what he said not to do, then people attribute the failures of those who did what Marx said not to do, to Marx.

There have been 17 attempts that I'm aware of to create a government based off of the ideals that Marx preached.

Of those 17 attempts, every one has ended up creating extreme poverty for the masses. Every one has led to massive amounts of death and abject misery. Every one has led to a dictator that sees his people as just cogs in a machine, easily replaced.

No matter how great Marx's system is (and having seen the aftermath personally of one of those attempts to enact it, I'm inclined to think that his system of thinking is semi-articulate garbage), it's obvious that we can't do what he prescribed and get the results he claimed we would.

Frankly, the part where all of the power temporarily concentrates before redistribution is the problem area: no one can withstand the temptation to just keep it.

Or possibly they never intended to let it go in the first place.

What does Marx say in the Communist Manifesto?

"The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution."

This is what Marx said, what his ideals were. A political fight in a country with the developed proletariat of the Ruhr Valley - Germany. What he can be judged by is what he said.

Marx said a precondition for his ideals would be the conditions the Ruhr Valley and Germany had. So if attempts made without the ingredients he stated failed, then Marx's ideals are shown to be correct. Your examples prove Marx was right.

There have clearly been repeated attempts to implement it. If you say that none of them have actually implemented it, you should consider that strong evidence that it cannot actually be implemented. These attempts have clearly universally led to great harm, which is evidence that the attempt inevitably leads in that direction.

If you expect to defend Marxism this way from the accusation of having "failed", then at best you are kicking the ideological can down the road, and at worst engaging in No True Scotsman fallacy.

> There have clearly been repeated attempts to implement it.

To implement what? People at the time of Marx asked him what system they should eventually implement. Marx replied he was not August Comte and did not write recipes for the cookshops of the future.

You have conjured up some non-existent system Marx supposedly wanted to put in place, then you say it was a failure, then you admonish people for not seeing Marx's system did not fail. What system? He explicitly said he had none.

Also, China by some measures has the largest economy in the world. Hanging over party conferences and Five Year Plan meetings are pictures of Marx and Mao. How has that failed. "Well, Marx's picture is there, but it's not real Marxist" people respond. Speaking of no true Scotsman cope.

No, I have not. I have pointed at every national-scale real-world system which its proponents argued to be intended as Marxist.

> How has that failed.... "Well, Marx's picture is there, but it's not real Marxist" people respond.

Now who is conjuring non-existent things?

Or are you seriously arguing that China is an example of "the most advanced country" which "[is] ready for [Marxism]" in the modern age, and that Maoism is an example of Marxism which you wish to claim as a success (while denying any Russian regime such status), and that "by some measures the largest economy in the world" (with several times the population of the USA) is ipso facto a success?

I don't think your argument merits a serious response, but there's a passing attempt anyway.