There’s been a lot of talk about the production capacity gap between Russia and NATO as it relates to artillery rounds specifically. Russia has retooled its economy and invested heavily in wartime production and is currently seeing it pay dividends both on the battlefield but also in the overall health of their economy. Meanwhile the NATO nations have refused to make the investment in restarting mass production of rounds, a capability liquidated and sold off under the guiding principles of neoliberalism, and instead has solely relied on draining existing stockpiles bits at a time. The result has been catastrophic for the Ukrainians tasked with dying on NATO’s behalf ever since the initial blitz push from the RusFed was repelled and the war has settled into a WWI style trench and artillery game of attrition.

I think though that we shouldn’t confuse an unwillingness with an inability. There’s no reason to believe that the US or Germany are incapable of making the investment to restart the mass production of artillery shells (or any mass produced weapon of war rather than the big ticket, hyper specialized war toys they prefer now). There’s an entire point to be made that in this moment of profitability crisis the only industries that are succeeding are the ones hand chosen by the state to be made so with direct subsidies and funding (re: Brenner & Riley’s Seven Theses in which they attempt to coin “political capitalism” as the new economic model post-neoliberalism). The general consensus seems to be that there’s so far been an unwillingness to commit to the production process because it’s been thought that the Russo-Ukrainian war will end before the investment will be worthwhile and then the general style of combat will return to anti-insurgency missions relying on drones and laser guided munitions rather than mass produced dumb bombs and shells. My fear is that if this calculation changes and there is heavy investment in restarting the NATO war machine it puts us on the path towards another world war. The European nations may see the success of the Russian economy under wartime policies and see the return of a military Keynesianism as an appealing out to their financial woes but, as we know from the start of the previous century, you can only build up your stock of weapons for so long before the imperative to use them arises. I’m worried that the long duree trends of the 21st century see the return of both multipolarity as well as great powers conflicts, but this time we have nukes. Guess there’s nothing to really do about it tho but enjoy the view

Just die already you old piece of shit

The Biden oped is mental.

says the words "two state solution"

refuses to elaborate

dies of severe old age

Any defense of a piece of media that cites sales numbers should result in forced reeducation. My son you have become the brand, repent and return to humanity

Israel has seemingly fallen hard into the “when the only tool you have is a hammer” trap re: the amount of their own civilians they’ve killed

BDS is an existential threat because it threatens to popularize the truth that Israel is an apartheid state. Proponents of the occupation will cite the end of apartheid South Africa as a worst case scenario. Hamas is less so for the inverse reason that the violent opposition (as long as it’s manageable violence) provides reason for the occupation to continue

Germany's green energy push was secretly propped up by outsourcing fossil fuel needs to Russian natural gas. The war in Ukraine and America subsequently blowing up the Nordstream 2 pipeline means Germany will need to find new alternatives to feeding their energy needs. One could hope this results in a speed up of green tech development as it becomes more of a pressing necessity than just, you know, the right thing to do. And hey speaking of knowing the right thing to do and then not doing it because of the perverse economic incentives for ignoring it, it's funny to note that the global leader in green tech is China but due to this new cold war the US is brewing and due to Germany's newly-humbled-into role as Jr Junior partner to the US there's no way there will be the necessary cooperation there between national tech sectors

Saudi Arabia will certainly be an interesting addition

The gigantic ppb is hilarious. Wait how does scale?

We could do a week long struggle session about whether gusano is a racial slur or not

We’re moving slowly but surely closer to the short fiction dystopian sci-fi stories where autonomous fighting machines continue to wage war long past the death of the last human

Anime titties