Yes it fucking was a colony. Calling somewhere “independent” and puppeting it while maintaining all colonial extractions is not freedom from colonialism.

You only learned the country’s name this week, and your entire understanding of this topic is from wikipedia. I am very much willing to give them, Burkina Faso and Mali an opportunity to be better, or not. At which point I will adjust my opinion.

Nigerian

At least get the name of the fucking country right. You’re naming the wrong ass country.

Every single african nation that today is no longer a colony achieved so through either a coup or revolutionary regime. What exactly are you expecting people to do? Vote colonialism out? How childish.

You either have to believe the new state is becoming a colony of Russia(it obviously isn’t), or accept that its improved from the colonial arrangement and that’s what makes it attractive to make deals with Russia.

Russia gets plenty out of it without doing anything colonial. The export deals France had were basically stripping the country of all of its wealth, Uranium and Gold in particular, which Niger are nationalising.

Russia will certainly get some beneficial deals out of their help offered but don’t have to make themselves as bad as France to come out on top of this, and in fact simply the act of weakening France and by extension the rest of the western bloc is a win for them by itself. I don’t see Russia as anywhere near as good as the Soviets were but the Soviet strategy was basically “liberate african countries entirely in order to weaken the west who are the colonial holders of these countries”. The history of soviet liberation of africa is also the primary reason many in africa still hold a lot of positivity to Russia, even though the two are not remotely comparable.

Watching France lose control of its remaining colonial holdings while the French population simultaneously cause chaos at home is a pleasure I did not expect to get until at least 2030.

You’re skipping the 11 other parties that are banned. Very free.

They are absurd and it’ll probably be a good thing when we’ve got past their existence. But the problem here is that proving surgery is essentially impossible. It’s quite unlike drugs that you can test for. Maybe implants you could test for but that’s just one thing, and I’m not sure that beauty pageants even have the kind of budget required for advanced tests.

I think it would have been fair to have a rule saying “no surgical modifications”…

How are you intending to prove that that? Only the bad surgery makes itself obvious.

Mate I don’t know why you’ve said half this shit. I talked about none of that. It’s like you’re talking at me rather than with me. US weapons? Who said anything about america? It’s like you’re reading off a script instead of actually responding to what I’ve said. I’m glad that you’re really excited to see loads of people die but like, actually talk to me instead of soapboxing.

This boundless optimism is so strange. Using something that was so long ago now for propaganda in the present is super misleading. Until we see a breakthrough of the defensive lines, literally just 1 layer of a line would be a good start let alone all 3 layers I can’t really agree with anyone that thinks much is going to happen from the ukrainian side. If/when that does happen I’d be happy to reassess.

This would be a useful additional feature, I think the shock value of the method I’m suggesting would have potential to interest at least some press outlets (probably not the major ones who would recognise it as damaging to the people they represent though). You need some novelty in this kind of thing to get it to spread.

That’s kinda the point. Being able to see just how few people own literally everything and thus are influencing opinion through means that people currently completely overlook is powerful. Advertising is literally propaganda. Consumer culture is propaganda. When you cut through that and make people conscious of it on a constant minute to minute basis you will see rapid radicalisation occur. Our society relies on a system of carefully designed barriers that create separation between the people and the ruling class in a way that is unnoticeable to the average person without prompting.

Think of it like pulling back the curtain in the wizard of oz for people.

I’ve always believed it would be useful to have a thing like this but for brand logos.

But instead of blurring or blocking the brand logo like an adblocker what it does instead is show you the face of the top shareholder in that brand. Remove the brands and show the assholes that own them. Where it’s not a single person you replace that brand with the name of the hedgefund or bank that owns the investment.

It would bring people’s attention away from brand consumerism and to a constant consciousness of the ruling class looming over them in everything.

This uhh. This is just nonsense right? I’m not aware of Ukraine having broken any of the defensive first lines let alone past any of the dragon’s teeth lines. There’s 2 more lines beyond those. Getting past these lines is necessary before getting even 10%, let alone 50%.

Or are they talking about something that happened much earlier? That’s really confusing too because anyone that’s been watching the map trackers knows nothing close to 50% ever happened. Certainly some pushback several months ago but hardly 50% ???

Every single left wing party in ukraine was banned, and my friends in the country were arrested for being socialists. Speech in the country can not be considered free and opinion can not be measured accurately at the current moment in time. It would also be sort of foolish to attempt this with the country split into 4 regions between Ukraine proper, Crimea and the two Donbas republics. Ideally you would include all of them in that data, and if we went back in time and looked pre-2014 (when the civil war started) we’d see a lot of support in those regions. But now? Everything is a mess and I wouldn’t trust either states at war to give us reliable data.

I of course don’t consider the factions pursuing a restoration of the Russian empire to have anything to do with socialism either. For the record.

Educated people in general have to say on politics the same things that I said earlier, but they are very nostalgic over less criminalized popular culture, better technical education and rules being followed. So am I to some extent actually.

In Moscow? You’re not being fair. Educated people in the soviet union from Moscow lived extremely well and have very positive views. Engineers, scientists, etc will all say positive things. You know as well as I do that hundreds of video interviews will confirm this. Be fairer, claiming that everyone that supports the ussr among the over 60s is just uneducated is definitely untrue. This particular video series is in Moscow and this lady is exactly what I am talking about.

You can’t live in Moscow and say this is untrue. You’re being unfair.

No recollection at all, I’m 1996, but since transition from USSR to modern Russia didn’t happen in an instance, in various institutions and organizations you can still see in some ways how it was. More in my childhood than now, but still.

Brought up in shock therapy then.

if you weren’t in denial.

I’m not in denial. I’m asking you to be fairer. The data does not support your position. You know as well as I do that 75% of the country consider the soviet era to be when the country was at its greatest (and that this is easily verifiable from many sources), and you know damn well that 75% of the country aren’t all uneducated people. You are not being fair.

Educated people in general have to say on politics the same things that I said earlier, but they are very nostalgic over less criminalized popular culture, better technical education and rules being followed. So am I to some extent actually.

In Moscow? You’re not being fair. Educated people in the soviet union from Moscow lived extremely well and have very positive views. Engineers, scientists, etc will all say positive things. You know as well as I do that hundreds of video interviews will confirm this. Be fairer, claiming that everyone that supports the ussr among the over 60s is just uneducated is definitely untrue. This particular video series is in Moscow and this lady is exactly what I am talking about.

You can’t live in Moscow and say this is untrue. You’re being unfair.

No recollection at all, I’m 1996, but since transition from USSR to modern Russia didn’t happen in an instance, in various institutions and organizations you can still see in some ways how it was. More in my childhood than now, but still.

Brought up in shock therapy then.

if you weren’t in denial.

I’m not in denial. I’m asking you to be fairer. The data does not support your position. You know as well as I do that 75% of the country consider the soviet era to be when the country was at its greatest (and that this is easily verifiable from many sources), and you know damn well that 75% of the country aren’t all uneducated people. You are not being fair.

I live in Russia and you do not.

Which area of Russia do you live in and what do the local people over 60 that actually lived in the USSR have to say? I already know of course and could post video interviews of such, but perhaps you could tell the thread what those people say.

Forgive me for assuming but I’m willing to bet you’re in your teens or twenties, making you at best 10 years old when it ended, meaning you have little to no actual recollection of what living and working was like. I could be wrong of course.

Of course nobody wants the same shit, I don’t want the same shit either, I know for sure that the hard left of mszp sit around where I am. Things can be so much better.

And? Socialism does not mean not having a multiparty system. I get that you’re trying to imply that approving of a multiparty system or a market economy is somehow evidence of being against socialism but both of those things exist under socialism. Yugoslavia was a market economy in eastern europe under socialism.

According to the absolute majority of respondents (54%), the majority of Hungarians had a better life under the Kádár regime (pre-1990) than today

The Kádár regime was the communist government.

there were even more respondents (61%) who said that the conditions for individual financial prosperity were more favorable under the Kádár regime.

lol

It is also worth noting that almost two-thirds of Hungarians (63%) said that there was predictable order and social peace under the Kádár regime

lmao

I like this research. Thanks for sharing.

EDIT:

The older an age group, the higher the proportion was of those who agreed that the majority lived better before the regime change. A significant correlation can be observed when looking at the educational background: citizens with lower education tend to believe that most Hungarians lived better under Kádár. Among the lowest qualified citizens, 62 and 27 percent are the share of the two sides, but even according to the relative majority of graduates (45%), most Hungarians lived better before 1990 than today.

So the older the Hungarian the more likely they are to believe that things were better under communism. So the people that actually lived in communism support it even more. Oh and the more educated people are the more likely they are to support that position too. I think the age thing will explain why the stat is slipping over time, the people that actually lived in communism are the people that support it more, and as they are dying they are being removed from the data.