Unfortunately the Year of the Four Emperors occurs ~70 years into the establishment of the imperium, and it doesn’t collapse for another 500 to 1400 years later (depending on who you ask). We’re gonna need a very accelerated timeline here

America is the belly of the beast. No communist organizing in the United States is going to be remotely possible or productive until that beast consumes itself. The balkanization of the United States is basically a prerequisite to any actual revolution there, otherwise you’ll just get Bernie-esque folks who are fine with worldwide oppression so long as the treats keep flowing. Any serious reckoning of America’s past (and present) of slavery and genocide requires the widespread collapse of the American imperial project and the American imaginary.

I think it’s notable that all this stuff is just the books after the Gospels. I’m not a Christian but the word of Christ himself is pretty good and decidedly not very bigoted. Paul’s letters to random churches are much less indicative of the Christian god’s views on things and more about what the Catholic (at that time really just meaning “universal”) church thought of matters. Many other Christians at the time, who have later been deemed “heretics” by the very people who enshrined Paul’s letters as “canonical” books of the Bible, would strongly disagree with Paul’s writings. Christianity is a very broad tent. The contents of the New Testament were only codified at the Council of Nicaea, over three hundred years after Christ.

It’s not so much that Francis ruthlessly purged reactionary cardinals (which he absolutely did), but more importantly he created various new seats for cardinals from the Global South appointed by him. This will be the first conclave in historical memory where less than 50% of the electors are from Europe.

Following the 2024 consistory, 110 of the cardinal electors had been appointed by Francis, 24 by Pope Benedict XVI, and 6 by Pope John Paul II. Each of Francis’ consistories has increased the number of cardinal electors from at or less than the set limit of 120[b] to a number higher than 120, as high as 140 in 2024, surpassing the record 135 set by Pope John Paul II in 2001 and 2003. Since 2 June 2023, two-thirds of the cardinal electors have been cardinals created by Francis. The December 2024 consistory increased that to about 79%, and 80% of the electors who may participate in the 2025 papal conclave were created by Francis.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinals_created_by_Francis

He both replaced ones that died off with his supporters and straight up fired plenty that refused papal authority. Any cardinal over 80 can’t vote anyway in the Papal Conclave. Francis also created a ton of new Cardinals for places that didn’t previously have that level of representation in the church, mostly from the global south. Something like 80% of the Cardinals eligible to vote in this Conclave were appointed by Francis.

No, Francis played the game well. He purged the college of Cardinals so most of the Cardinals are his own appointees. They’ll elect another Francis.

Oh yeah, it’s School of Names posting time. The sky is as low as earth, mountains are level with marshes.

Wow, I can’t believe they build 10,000 new apartments just for show so they can take tourists on tours through all 10,000 empty apartments and that they 100% will not use these to house citizens, crazy that it’s all just fake. Just shows you how crazy the North Korea gommunist regime is.

We’re arguing the same thing I think. Hard work should be compensated with appropriate wages and living conditions, manual labourer or office worker or whoever. Ideally nobody should work, but until we build that work this is the one we’ve got. Labour is always morally “wrong” under capitalism because it is definitionally exploitative.

Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order Because Of Little-Known ‘No One Will Stop Me’ Loophole

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSQeLMhOLtU

I mean ostensibly you’re right, Americans absolutely cannot and will not do low paid heavy manual labour. I think the point is that it’s not ridiculous to expect somebody supposedly on “the Left” to make the leap that maybe nobody should be doing low paid heavy manual labour. This is just classic socdem labour aristocracy spoils of empire type shit, that it’s fine slave labour happens, just not here.

The environmental impacts of this dam were immense, as were just the like impacts on real people. Millions of people were moved to newly built cities or existing cities because their homes were flooded. Entire cities were dismantled. It was an absolutely massive project that unequivocally made the lives of millions worse (at least in the short term and watching their homes be flooded intentionally). Granted taming the Yellow River is a massive feat, and the power this thing generates is insane, but there are plenty of legitimate critiques to be made.

Bond markets are the true sovereigns in this hellscape we’ve constructed.

Yeah I agree. The tariffs are the show. We can have a second show, sure, but they are absolutely An Event on their own.

Amazing. Tit for tat baby. China’s cooking.

Glad to have you back comrade. Your analysis has been greatly missed during the recent trade war! Do you think it bodes well for China developing its domestic consumption and dedollarisation in general? Still not really sure how I read it yet.

This is fucking nuts. China makes 50% of the world’s ships. By contrast, the United States makes 0.10%, literally 500 times less. US ship building is so bad that they’re outsourcing repairs to US naval fleet ships to South Korea shipyard (who make 30% of global ships). The US has no capacity to build boats.

Why the fuck do they think this will work? The last “ground offensive” ended when Yemen blew up some Saudi oil processing facilities and the Saudis realised their infinite money machine was now threatened. Since then (2019), Yemen’s missile and drone capabilities have gotten so good that they’ve unilaterally shut down the Red Sea for shipping. What the fuck do they think will happen when they turn that machine back to Saudi oil targets???

Crypto is like gold but if gold was the hallucination of a tech bro and the “mining” of gold was continuous rather than a one time deal and if gold was not shiny or pretty and used for objects of great beauty