I can hear this in his voice and it's hilarious.

True but also I think in a war with China those won't matter as much as some combination of drone production, missile production capacities, ability to get those through the enemy defenses (counter-jamming, electronic warfare, tactics, etc) AND/OR your ability to take down drones and missiles effectively and not too expensively (resource-wise not cost-wise). The US isn't going to fight a ground war against China in a conventional sense. It's going to be on the high seas, a world war probably across many island chains with naval logistic and control of the seas and air more important. But who knows.

So drones + fighters + other air assets + missiles + naval assets and the ability to leverage them, use electronic warfare, dirty tricks, secret weapons, combined arms, etc to overcome the enemy and strike deep and hard or maintain superiority.

Probably. On the other hand they do like radicalizing people so they can use them as an excuse to outlaw or further surveil or attack organizations so it's not impossible they were really hoping to paint MLK with the communist brush and if they had to literally turn people into communists around him to get that to work they were quite willing to do so. Hoover in particular was desperate for it so absolutely wouldn't have been beyond trying to create some communists if it meant giving him more ammo to take down the civil rights movement and MLK.

unless they're literally just been lying they've been struggling really badly to do this, they constantly keep missing their production targets by a ton

Production capacity is not yet online. Shockingly it takes time to build factories and get them producing, however the work has been put in, ground has been broken and Ukraine increasingly has a skilled workforce for this kind of thing. They're not online right now but likely will be as I said within 3 years if not less which is plenty of time for the China conflict or any plans by Europe to do a charge at Russia in future as they keep talking up a war with Russia being inevitable.

placing your fancy new arm production facilities (even underground ones) within striking range of Russia's missiles while planning to go to war against them again would be so stupid

Three things

1. Germany is also within range of Russian missiles if they want to hit them. This isn't really a negative against Ukraine at all.
2. It's quite possible they don't intend to go to war with Russia and it's all a big part of the propaganda campaign to get NATO whipped into shape for war with China.
3. Russia has not show the ability to completely take out Ukrainian production, especially in the far ~~east~~ west. They have to use very expensive weapon like Oreshnik or Kaliber to strike that deep. Fact is they have an intelligence gap with NATO. NATO has incredible supremacy in intelligence gathering both geo-spacial via satellites all over the place as well as hacking, infiltration, human-int, etc. Frankly Russia is still struggling to find and strike the drone workshops and factories that Ukraine uses.

I really have to wonder if it isn't intentional at times like these. I know the way the bourgeois electoral theatrics work is it isn't something that should be consciously known by the participants but the Democrats at times REALLY seem to be openly taking a fall and planting their face while wearing a smirk and then saying "aww shucks" with a comic laugh to their base full of fools while winking at the Republicans and the camera.

‘- massive expansion in terms of dollars and terror of state power against immigrants. I’ve been skeptical about efforts to terrorize, imprison, and deport immigrants due to the critical function they serve in the economy, but now…. I don’t know

I am genuinely beginning to think they want to do a return to white supremacy thing. They kick out the immigrants, immiserate the population including white people, take their healthcare, force the neurodivergent to work and then exploit those groups to fill the roles previously filled by immigrants while whipping people up with "at least we're a white nation and can be great again" rhetoric which the hogs will be excited about. Of course they won't kick them all out, it's not possible or desirable but they'll use the terror to further suppress their wages and living conditions and any chance of bargaining power, push them into a pseudo-slavery like arrangement. They'll push them to back of house, they'll push them out of view where they can be exploited in the worst conditions out of sight while pushing the aforementioned whiter workers under more exploitation into the front of house work immigrants previously did so the ILLUSION of the immigrants being gone is maintained.

A transcription of a phone call or the recording of a phone call.

Eh they've been building capacity though.

Among other things I just can't see this Ukraine situation ending with a total Russian victory. I think Russia captures the entire eastern oblasts that voted to secede plus maybe a buffer area or cordon sanitaire as they've called it and the Ukrainians agree to stop attacking Russia, to stop contesting (but not formally recognize) the eastern oblasts Russia has annexed plus Crimea, and to keep troop levels lower and/or to not move them within a certain distance of the cordon sanitaire or Belarus.

I don't see full denazification, I don't see full disarmament.

What I do see is the west has already started and used the war economy of Ukraine to jump-start arms production factories in western Ukraine. What I see is the west turning western Ukraine into a bunch of heavily exploited, but quite competent and experienced and low cost weapons makers for the west. They plan to turn it into their war factory for the coming war with Russia and/or China and I do think that within the next 3 years they'll have that capacity operational and be able to use it against China or Russia and it will be significant in the amount of production capacity it will give them and the ability it will give the west to stay in a long fight.

Filling Ukraine with arms factories really is a win-win for the capitalists as they get the increased money from the increased "defense" spending but by spending it in a devastated rump state of a country they stretch their dollars a lot further, can actually meet the needed quotas for weapons for the western war machine against China/Russia WHILE also pocketing still record profits.

That number apparently also allows up to 1.5% of it to be spent on things like highways and bridges in support of infrastructure necessary for troop movements. But to be honest even a 1% bump in GDP towards arms is a pretty big amount.

but I’m less clear on how they approach doing this to standard US citizens, so curious if you know?

No one knows. Not even they themselves know. It's being actively developed and the policy and envelope actively and steadily pushed forward further and further. What the situation is now probably won't be what the situation is in 12 months.

The thing is as a US citizen they cannot deny you re-entry to the country (if you're non-white I wouldn't be positive they wouldn't try in the future to some amount of such people to detain and possibly deport them or something but if you're a citizen by birth at least that's a lot more difficult even then). They cannot hold you without charging you for more than I think 48-72 hours, one of those though I think unfortunately that might be guidance within the agency rather than law so they could possibly in future push and stretch that period out but at that point we may be through the looking glass entirely. They can take your stuff and resisting them by refusing to unlock your phone will be noted and probably result in future searches and enhanced scrutiny but then again may not.

In most cases in the past (things are changing obviously so who knows where this goes) refusing to unlock your phone as a citizen resulted in detention for a few hours which was considered punishment enough as by then you'd miss your flight and have lost hundreds or thousands of dollars. There were exceptions of course like whistleblower journalists, genuine criminals like pedophiles, etc.

If it's just those airport security TSA people they probably won't do a thorough search and most likely will just briefly look through your photos and apps including messenger apps and emails for maybe 5 minutes looking for super obvious crimes in front of you BUT if they take it to another room or its CBP or ICE they might try and use a graykey or other hacking device on it to download the contents or even in theory install malware as well. You have no way of knowing what direction the search will go once you hand over your unlocked phone so that's the problem and you can't exactly demand it back. They could start out searching it in front of you casually and take it out of sight to a back room with a hacking device and you'd be powerless to do anything about it.

One trick that MIGHT work (be careful, lying to these people could be a crime, I am not a lawyer, check with a lawyer) is saying it's a business phone. If your trip is for business this holds more weight and in most cases they'll give up because companies have rights to keep secrets that the government respects a lot more than the rights of their disposable proles. This works better for laptops as phones they might still assume you can unlock in order to use it. This won't work if you're specifically targeted.

Make a plan before you travel. Are you okay resisting them and accepting the consequences? How far will you resist? Will you really accept missing your flight? Will you accept missing your flight and being detained for 48 hours? Will you accept that plus them confiscating your phone? If you decide you might bend the knee if detained then decide what you need to do to minimize harm like deleting all your social media and chat apps off your phone BEFORE traveling (to reinstall on the other side) so that you're comfortable being able to unlock your phone and hand it over. Be warned some encrypted chat apps won't back-up their messages, look into the specifics of each one. The best thing to do is of course erase your phone before traveling and restore on the other side or when you get back home from back-ups. Have an explanation ready for why your phone is blank though, you had a problem with it for example and had to reset it. Try and create some activity on it so it looks a little lived in.

Cash in an envelope without a return address? Extra paranoid drop it in a city/neighborhood mail box collection point rather than from your home. Just make clear on the inside that it's a donation.

Other than that there's crypto with CERTAIN currencies IF they accept it and IF you use non-KYC means of acquiring it which is itself a whole pain in the ass and journey.

There's also buying a gift credit card for cash at a grocery some distance from your home that you don't normally frequent, registering it under a false name and using that though you'll be paying $5-$6 to the CC company as a fee for the privilege and some services may not accept those.

Just imagining it now: "I spent over a year as a guest of Hamas and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"

No, they're going to coach at least a few of them into making up stories about horrors and atrocities and put those obviously staged and coerced "stories" on blast in the western news media. And if they can't coach any into that they'll just make it up like theremoveds and the western media will keep repeating it and using it to bash pro-Palestinians over the head.

On a related note. Bets on whether this ceasefire results in the ICC/ICJ washing their hands of the whole thing or the US managing to lean on South Africa enough to drop the case? Because I just can't see the west not pulling out all the stops to brush this whole thing under a rug and say it's in the past.