#the decline of us hegemony

[belleandre-belle]

[workersolidarity]

From 1990 to 2019, the People's Republic of China has gone from a Poverty rate of 99%, to a poverty rate of less than 25% in just 29 years.

And just in the period of time Xi Jinping has been General Secretary of Communist Party of China, or the CPC, the Poverty rate in China has halved.

Poverty in that time in the US has been highly unequally distributed, with poverty rates increasing in some areas, decreasing in others, but largely remaining in similar territory since the 1970's. But the larger context shows a considerable destruction of wealth depending on when you were born with poverty rates lowest for those 65 and over, with much higher poverty rates among children.

The pattern suggests a dichotomy between the rapid rise of China and its attending decline in poverty, versus a slowly declining United States and the associated increases in poverty on younger generations. Though again, it depends largely on the state in which you live and how much your state invests in anti-poverty programs.

[branwinged]

why is there so much anti dragon sentiment in the asoiaf fandom?

i was going to leave this at "fifteen years with no book and two divisive adaptations results in way too much inane discourse". but instead i'm going to talk about metaphors.

i've noticed a desire for neat, didactical, metaphorical readings for everything that makes people uncomfortable about these books. and discomfort with a topic is something i understand, but it cannot be resolved by forcing a reading on the text which may align with your personal or political views, but is actually misconstruing the text. in asoiaf, this usually centres around the targaryens because the incest, the dragons, their alleged magical bloodline, the lost mythic empire, and that someone from their line is prophesied to quite literally save the world - are all divisive story elements. people have correctly identified that despite the power fantasy of their conceptualisation, martin is not writing them as merely self indulgent, aspirational figures, but they've also overcorrected that into 'actually every element of their characterisation reveals one true didactic intent'. so, every instance of incest must be a metaphor for auto cannibalism, the dragons are only a nuke metaphor, the sense of superiority is a stand-in for supremacist ideology etc.

and the thing is, yes martin has sometimes used these elements as such. the dance is a story about the family self cannibalising itself, in part, as a consequence of the institutionalised incest, since under that practice every claimant to the throne was obviously going to be a close family member, which led to all the kinslaying. and the dragons historically have been used to maintain the hegemony of the crown through the threat of terrible, magical violence. this is true. but it's also not all he has to say on the topic. this is one idea he's exploring among a lot of other (often contradictory) ideas. yes, their habit of forgoing exogamous marriage alliances forced them into a precarious position post-dance once they lost their dragons and there is a point being made here about their dynastic decline. but at the same time, egg's failed attempts to forcibly marry his sons (one of whom was gay) out of the family is also saying something about both arranged exogamous westerosi and endogamous targaryen marriages being materially oppressive in almost the exact same ways, and that simply pivoting to the former wouldn't have saved them because the real enemy is westerosi feudal patriarchy, the system under which daughters are exchanged for securing political (or dragon) power and all second sons are subordinate to the first. that in a way, everyone is eating their young. someone very much into the 'all incest as auto cannibalism' metaphor is ignoring this, the way someone who only thinks of dragons as nukes is ignoring the very obvious reworking of them as a symbol of change and freedom in dany's storyline. and this is the problem at hand. the thing about metaphors is that they work up to a certain extent, but often people treat them as the only acceptable reading of a text, instead of something that is in conversation with a lot of other ideas simultaneously being explored by the story. all this leads to, is the flattening of a complex story into a reductive, didactic message of their preference. and, of course, to reduce every fantasy element in these books to simply an analogue for some real world topic, is to take the fantasy intrigue out of the fantasy series.

[newnitz]

Ashkenormativity

Ashkenormativity is the assumption that the default Jew is the Ashkenazi one. It is a term coined by Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews to explain our alienation from the rest of the Jewish community, from my lived experience specifically from the Diaspora Jewish community.

I'm half-Ashkenazi, but that half is pretty secular. When it comes to major Jewish holidays, I've always done them with my maternal grandparents, who, despite being secularized, still respect their cantor roots to the point of not wanting to skip on a holiday or even shorten the Seder(until one hilariously bad one). So the only minhag I've known was the Sephardi one.

In Israel, this was a non-issue.

The most I heard about differences is how Sephardim and Mizrahim emphasize table manners because unlike Ashkenazim, they actually eat on the table.

When I left Israel and moved to a place hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest Jewish community, I finally realized how much I need our community. So like everyone on lockdown, I sought it online, where Jewish cultures is bagels and casual use of Yiddish, two things completely foreign to me. I mean we have bagels in Israel, but they're not the meme they are among US Jews. They're nowhere near as popular as a pita. So when I had to look up what "davening", "shul" and "shanda" meant, I first got the sense I don't actually belong.

But the people using those terms as a day to day weren't the ones who actively made me feel unwelcome. In fact, those were more likely to acknowledge my confusion and explain. The ones who alienated me are the antizionist Jews from the Anglosphere, who ignore and revise non-Ashkenazi history and even history of Ashkenazim outside the Global North, who blame modern Hebrew for the decline of Yiddish which they frame as the traditional Jewish language, ignoring how that pushes down communities that traditionally spoke Ladino, Juddeo-Arabic, Amharic and more, and overall infantilize and dismiss families like mine who built a good life for ourselves in Israel and rose to the position to actively combat Ashkenazi hegemony, and remove the agency of my former classmates who take a stand against it, all in favor of superimposing the race politics of the Anglosphere onto Israel.

So the Columbia university definition of singling out "white Jews" is quite inaccurate. Under ashkenormativity, an Ashkenazi JoC would find themselves better represented than the white-presenting members of my Sephardi(or raised according to that half) family. It's another reductivist attempt to superimpose European guilt onto Jews by erasing half of us. Specifically, the half that lives in Israel.

Goyim, ashkenormativity doesn't belong to you. Stop using it as a shield to be antisemitic. Stop using it as anything regarding inter-community issues, it's our term to use within our community.

[komsomolka]

The Ukrainian state is US/Western controlled and, in its alliance and arming, is effectively NATO-like. Washington, according to coup-happy Victoria Nuland in 2014, pumped some $5 billion into Ukraine since the Western-intelligence induced “Orange” revolution in 2004; an additional $15-$18 billion in arms, loans, and grants (from the US and EU) were poured into Ukraine since the 2013-2014 CIA-backed, far-right enforced regime change of the democratically elected Ukrainian government and until before the war began.

With on-the-ground CIA direction, power in Ukraine was consolidated among a small sociopolitical base of venal Russophobes, political pluralism representing genuinely alternative visions to the essentially nationalist, ultranationalist, pro-NATO parties disbanded. The Ukraine army, neo-fascist death squads, and small, Nazi-throwback extreme right-wing parties, celebrated by the new leaders and incorporated into the Ukrainian state, went on a repression spree, a terror campaign, to crush protests and dissent against those who were unhappy with what transpired and to erase all things Russian, including an eight-year shelling and sniping war on civilians designed to create terror and ethnic cleansing in eastern Donbass. This was not a democracy but a monopoly on power to consolidate a vociferously, fanatically anti-Russian state.

Ukraine is (or now, was) merely a platform for a Western proxy war against Russia, a forward operations base, a front line state, its “foreign policy” directed by the American proconsul, its institutions “advised” by American/Western intelligence functionaries and embassy officials, whose job since 2014 was to ensure continuing aggravation and antagonism in Donbass to elicit, in fact, a Russian response justifying long-prepared sanctions, escalation and pretext for “confronting” Russia. [...]

The Russian offensive, therefore, occurred for a much more ominous reason than the Ukrainian state terrorism visited upon eastern Donbass: the US/West’s wordless wish is no less than demoralizing, weakening, bankrupting, and territorially fragmenting the Russian Federation, controlling its markets and resources, indebting its people and rendering them dependent on US-dominated financial institutions, and bringing Russia under American dependency.

A pivotal principle of American hegemony is to obstruct and destroy friendly, normal ties, much less integration, between Russia and Europe, Germany being the fulcrum.

More simply, the strategic US/CIA goal is to ensnare Russia in a protracted war, deplete it, damage it, regime-change it, install a supine leader—all as a prelude to the big fantasy: bringing down China.

The multifaceted war on Russia has been ongoing since at least the late 1990s, but really, it never stopped with the Soviet state’s disappearance. This veiled hostility and aggression certainly existed when Boris Yeltsin was in power (a good vassal according to Washington, this silly and funny man that made Bill Clinton laugh) but took off around 2005, after Washington understood that Vladimir Putin was putting Russia on an independent course, reversing the conditions overseen under the preceding, deplorable Yeltsin era, including steep economic, social, military, and developmental decline and the immiseration of the vast majority of the population, looting oligarchs, and economic “liberalization” designed in Washington. [...]

Russia has literally allowed itself to be cornered since 2014, though it needed time to achieve a conventional and nuclear deterrent. It’s not hard to see reality: Russia is given no quarter, no voice, its real concerns and grievances dismissed, its leader demonized, its marginalization doggedly pursued at every level of international and bilateral social and cultural interactions. No appeal to reason, to international law, to security, to evidence will do for the West, no amount of patient legal argument, explanation of Russian concerns, appeals, professional warnings, consummate diplomacy and transparency of Russian interests made an impression. Instead, the Western response was and is always to double down. [...]

Finance capitalism, the system of speculative bubbles, derivatives, debt, declining standards of living, and hyperinflation, is ruining Western economies, states and societies, destroying the middle classes. The US cannot tolerate Eurasian integration and China’s Belt and Road Initiative, determined to stop any alternative development model to hyper-capitalism enriching the few, cannibalizing the many; that reduces the US to one of a handful of important multipolar players.

Washington’s grave mismanagement of international relations, its self-defeating policies, has actually weakened genuine American interests and national security and the well-being and safety of the American people, a phenomenon that cannot be naively attributed to Democrats or Republicans, this or that president. Instead, the war-state is deeply embedded in the American political economy, in factions such as the “intelligence community,” the military-industrial complex, influential establishment neo-cons, and liberal interventionists, all living in a world of yesterday.

We are rushing headlong into extremely dangerous times in which facts are a threat to the state narrative and any dissent or differing opinion is treachery. Fascism does not come from below, always from the top.

[thelostdreamsthings]

"Putin is isolated."

BRICS, 50% of the World population is telling a big "fuck off" to the arrogant, declining and decadent G7 amounting to 10% of the World's population.

🇺🇳🇷🇺 UN Secretary General Guterres respectfully bows and shakes the hand of Putin in Russia’s Kazan at the BRICS summit.

A lot of people start crying and scream hysterically when they see this picture, for some reason.

[BRICS Currency Looms Large: Could This Be the Beginning of the End for U.S. Dollar Dominance?

For decades, the U.S. dollar has been weaponized as a tool of global dominance, wielded by the American empire to enforce its geopolitical will.

Through sanctions, coercive financial practices, and the threat of exclusion from the dollar-based system, the U.S. has effectively terrorized nations across the world.

The pretense of a “free market” economy has long been shattered by Washington's aggressive use of the dollar as a weapon to cripple economies, isolate adversaries, and exert control over global trade.

But the world is growing tired—sick and tired—of this financial tyranny. And now, with the rise of BRICS, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end for U.S. dollar supremacy.

BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—represent a bloc of nations that together account for nearly half of the global population and a significant chunk of the world’s GDP.

For years, these nations have been quietly collaborating to counterbalance the West's stranglehold over international finance, and now, they are inching closer to launching their own currency.

The creation of a BRICS currency signals an outright challenge to the dollar-dominated global economy, and it is nothing short of a revolt against American financial imperialism.

Why is this happening? The answer is simple: countries are fed up with being bullied. The U.S. has used its currency like a sledgehammer, smashing nations that dare to defy its hegemony.

Whether through sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, or Russia, or by financially suffocating smaller nations into submission, the dollar has become a tool of coercion rather than commerce.

Nations who once played by the rules of the so-called ��global order” have found themselves punished, their economies crippled, and their people starved—merely for refusing to kowtow to Washington's dictates.

But BRICS is offering an alternative. The creation of a BRICS currency, backed by the economic strength of its member nations, offers the world a way out of the suffocating grip of the dollar.

This is not just about financial autonomy—it’s about reclaiming sovereignty, independence, and the right to conduct trade without the constant threat of U.S. interference.

Russia and China have been leading the charge in this effort, driven in part by the U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow following the Ukraine conflict and the ongoing trade war with Beijing.

Both countries have moved aggressively to reduce their reliance on the U.S. dollar, increasing trade with each other and with other BRICS members in their local currencies.

They are laying the groundwork for a currency that could be based on a basket of commodities, potentially gold-backed, further weakening the grip of the U.S. dollar on the global market.

The U.S. has long prided itself on its role as the issuer of the world’s reserve currency, but this dominance was never guaranteed to last forever.

The BRICS currency threatens to dismantle the global financial architecture that has allowed the U.S. to live far beyond its means.

For decades, the U.S. has run massive deficits, printing money at will, secure in the knowledge that the world would continue to rely on the dollar.

But as BRICS nations move to establish their own currency, that privilege could evaporate overnight.

The implications for the U.S. are dire. If the dollar loses its status as the world’s reserve currency, the U.S. economy could face a severe reckoning.

The artificial demand for dollars that has kept interest rates low and allowed the U.S. to run massive debt could vanish, leading to inflation, higher borrowing costs, and potentially a fiscal crisis.

The American empire, propped up for so long by its control of global finance, could find itself in rapid decline.

For the rest of the world, however, the rise of a BRICS currency represents hope—a chance to escape the iron grip of U.S. financial imperialism. No longer will countries have to fear the punitive measures of the U.S. Treasury.

No longer will they have to worry about being cut off from the global financial system for standing up to American bullying.

The creation of a new currency could usher in a multipolar world, where nations are free to trade without being subject to the whims of a single superpower.

Of course, the U.S. will not go quietly. Washington will likely pull out all the stops to crush the BRICS currency before it can gain traction. The playbook will be the same: propaganda, financial sabotage, and even the threat of military intervention.

But this time, the world may not be so easily intimidated. The BRICS nations, backed by their vast resources and burgeoning economies, are prepared to stand their ground.

In the end, the creation of a BRICS currency is not just an economic development—it’s a revolutionary act. It’s a declaration that the age of American financial dominance is coming to an end, and that a new world is on the horizon.

The U.S. dollar, once seen as the bedrock of global stability, has become a symbol of oppression, and the world is ready to move on.

The question now is not whether the U.S. dollar will fall, but when. And as BRICS moves closer to launching its own currency, that day may be sooner than anyone expects.

The empire, long propped up by its financial manipulation, is facing a reckoning—one that could change the course of history.]

IMF Growth Forecast: 2024

🇮🇳India: 7.0% (BRICS)

🇨🇳China: 4.8% (BRICS)

🇷🇺Russia: 3.6% (BRICS)

🇧🇷Brazil: 3.0% (BRICS)

🇺🇸US: 2.8% (G7)

🇸🇦KSA: 1.5% (invited to BRICS)

🇨🇦Canada: 1.3% (G7)

🇿🇦RSA: 1.1% (BRICS)

🇬🇧UK: 1.1% (G7)

🇫🇷France: 1.1% (G7)

🇮🇹Italy: 0.7% (G7)

🇯🇵Japan: 0.3% (G7)

🇩🇪Germany: 0.0% (G7)

‼️ 159 out of 193 countries have signed up to use the new BRICS settlement system.

US and European Union will no longer be able to use economic sanctions as a weapon.

This system allows countries to settle trades and payments in their own currencies, reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar, which has long been the dominant global currency.

[metamatar]

After World War II, as the USA consolidated its position as the leading capitalist power in the world, so immense was the right-wing national consensus, so pathological the anti-communist phobia, that those lonely figures, such as Kenneth Burke, who continued to do serious radical work in literary and cultural theory were thoroughly marginalized.

The cumulative weight of this cultural configuration has been such that when ‘New Criticism’ appeared on the horizon – with its fetishistic notions of the utter autonomy of each single literary work, and its post-Romantic idea of ‘Literature’ as a special kind of language which yields a special kind of knowledge – its practice of reified reading proved altogether hegemonic in American literary studies for a quarter-century or more, and it proved extremely useful as a pedagogical tool in the American classroom precisely because it required of the student little knowledge of anything not strictly ‘literary’ – no history which was not predominantly literary history, no science of the social, no philosophy – except the procedures and precepts of literary formalism, which, too, it could not entirely accept in full objectivist rigour thanks to its prior commitment to squeezing a particular ideological meaning out of each literary text. The favourite New Critical text was the short lyric, precisely because the lyric could be detached with comparatively greater ease from the larger body of texts, and indeed from the world itself, to become the ground for analysis of compositional minutiae; the pedagogical advantage was, of course, that such analyses of short lyrics could fit rather neatly into one hour in the undergraduate classroom. This pedagogical advantage, and the attendant detachment of ‘Literature’ from the crises and combats of real life, served also to conceal the ideology of some of the leading lights of ‘New Criticism’ who were quaintly called ‘Agrarian Populist’ but were really bourgeois gentlemen of the New South, the cultural heirs of the old slaveowning class. What is even more significant, however, is that ‘New Criticism’reached its greatest power in the late 1940s, as the USA launched the Cold War and entered the period of McCarthyism, and that its definitive decline from hegemony began in the late 1950s as McCarthyism, in the strict sense, also receded and the Eisenhower doctrine began to give way to those more contradictory trends which eventually flowered during the Kennedy era – those golden years of US liberalism which gave us the Vietnam War. The peculiar blend of formalist detachment and deliberate distancing from forms of the prose narrative, with their inescapable locations in social life, into reified readings of short lyrics was, so to speak, the objective correlative of other kinds of distancing and reifications required by the larger culture.

Aijaz Ahmed, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures

[uss-edsall]

I love ArmA III's campaign, because you are not special forces.

You aren't, even, technically an infantryman.

You are treated accordingly.

The result of it is a remarkable criticism in its own right of the worldwide fascination with Special Forces, and the morally grey-to-black work they swim in; viewed from the perspective of someone who isn't one of them.

Spoilers below.

ArmA III's campaign is very similar in premise to literally every previous entry. It goes back to its roots.

Preamble

In Operation Flashpoint, a rogue communist general destroys American force presence on an island, and you fight to liberate said island. In Armed Assault, the communist leader of the northern nation on an island attacks its neighbor just as American forces are withdrawing from the country. You play those American forces, fighting alongside the monarchist neighbor. In ArmA II, you play American marine special forces who perform pre-invasion operations in a Not-Eastern Europe Country, then support the marine invasion -- and then have to go to ground and fight alongside the rebels you were previously fighting when the US abruptly withdraws.

ArmA III starts out similar to Armed Assault. You are Corporal Kerry, an American logistics (truck) driver for Task Force Aegis, a multinational peacekeeping force formed by NATO, in the aftermath of a civil war in the Republic of Altis and Stratis. The campaign, set in 2035 (which was 23 years away at the game's release), is all centred around a time of a superpower being created through mass alliances.

The enemy is CSAT (Canton Protocol Strategic Alliance Treaty), a superpower created through a mass alliance of nations like China and Iran. They are surging in power as American and NATO supremacy/hegemony declines.

The Republic of Altis and Stratis is the victim of Great Power Proxy Wars. In 2026, a dictator named Colonel Akhanteros seized power, sparking a civil war between the former regime's loyalists and the country's military, the Altis Armed Forces (AAF) under Akhanteros' command. From 2026-2030, the Altian Civil War devastated the nation, ending in Akhanteros' victory. TF Aegis has been in the nation ever since, trying to prevent civil war from breaking out again and largely opposing former-Loyalist fighters. TF Aegis is preparing to leave in 2035.

Just days before Task Force Aegis finishes its withdrawal and leaves for good, the AAF - previously denigrated and constantly insulted by the Aegis members who had been training them to take over once they left - suddenly attack, overwhelming the few remaining Aegis members, and devastates the NATO force. Why they did this is not made immediately clear.

You, Corporal Kerry, are one of the few survivors.

Chapter One

In the first 'chapter,' of the campaign, during the destruction of TF Aegis you make contact with a British special forces guy named Miller, leading something called the CTRG (Combat Technology Research Group). They openly admit to be Special Forces, claiming to be British special forces in particular and performing clandestine operations in the country. They seemingly chose to throw away their secrecy to save the few members of Aegis they could. Less than a handful of your allies remain, rescued from certain death and brought to the CTRG basecamp.

During this time, Kerry, Aegis, and the CTRG fight a war of resistance against the AAF, securing various objectives and attempting to strike back, certain that NATO will send a quick reaction force to retaliate and rescue you. In one notable mission, you provide support to the special forces as they try to take back a communications outpost to call for help from NATO. The CTRG abruptly declare that all the tech in there's useless, they're blowing the place up, and you withdraw.

During the chapter, the CTRG members, even their charismatic second-in-command James that's immediately likable, make it clear very quickly that they're not telling the peacekeeper survivors their real mission objectives, nor what exactly are they doing there. This makes your Aegis allies uneasy on their presence. You, Corporal Kerry, are left in the dark for a lot of things, but James makes you want to like him. The fact they're Special Forces make you want to trust them.

Corporal Kerry, who by then has already pulled off some frankly impossible tasks to ask of a logistics truck driver before these events, doesn't much like this:

Kerry: Respectfully, sir, when the hell are you going to tell us what's going on? Miller: Saying 'respectfully', Corporal, and proceeding to be disrespectful somewhat defeats the purpose, don't you think? ... Look, I can't say exactly what happened. What I can say is what's happening right now. We're headed to Altis. There's a local guerilla movement there - FIA - the same guys that got themselves killed for us back on Stratis. We'll make a quiet entrance and link up with them.

The first chapter ends with you trying to escape Altis to reach the island of Stratis. The AAF finds you all and proceed to obliterate you and your allies with extreme prejudice.

Chapter Two

The second chapter begins with you waking up from having been knocked unconscious, washing ashore next to the body of a CTRG member.

You are the only survivor of Task Force Aegis.

The CTRG makes contact with the loyalist resistance remnant -- and it is revealed that the CTRG have worked with the resistance before. During the civil war, the CTRG were secretly supporting the loyalists; the same insurgents the protagonist was fighting for the past couple years before the AAF turned on them. Captain Miller and Lieutenant James are surprised as hell that you, Kerry, are alive. Pleasantly surprised, though. They proceed to order you to do another impossible task.

During this chapter it is revealed that CSAT is now backing the AAF. Moreover than that, CSAT has deployed troops to the island, not as peacekeepers but as reinforcements. The CTRG remains shady, and continues to leave Kerry in the dark. One mission begins with you supporting the CTRG and the guerillas in a convoy ambush, but abruptly, you end up in charge. The CTRG have some other pressing objective they won't tell you about, and they leave you behind.

You aren't special forces. They don't trust you.

Kerry: But - with respect - what about the convoy? Are we still on for that? James: You ask a lot of questions, Corporal. Don't worry. Miller will be in touch soon. You'll know what to do.

While Kerry's relationship with the guerillas starts out rocky, by the end of this chapter they trust him implicitly. He has fought beside them, bled beside them, they are brothers in arms.

At the end of the second chapter, you return to Altis, having wreaked havoc on Stratis and been reinforced by the guerillas. Causing great damage, it feels like you're making an effective push against AAF forces.

Then NATO arrives.

This should be happy, for NATO is finally here to save the day, except the first thing NATO does is open fire on the guerilla forces, killing Stavrou, the leader of the group. Kerry tries to call on the CTRG, begging for their help in stopping this - the CTRG do not respond. In the end, it's up to Kerry to make contact and stop the slaughter.

Except when you meet the NATO commander...

Kerry: What about Captain Miller, sir? He was supposed to establish [communications] with your main force. Crossroads: I'm sorry, who? Kerry: Captain Scott Miller. UKSF? Kinda ... talks like he's got a stick up his ass all the time? Crossroads: The British? The Brits are no longer operating in this area. To my knowledge, they've been out since May. And, regardless, we have no record of a Captain Scott Miller.

Chapter Three

The third chapter begins with Corporal Kerry disgraced.

Soldier 1: Yeah, that's him. The 'guerrilla' guy. Soldier 2: He's been hiding on Altis this whole time?

Kerry is all but accused directly of desertion. Some of the American soldiers even suspect Kerry was part of the massacre of TF Aegis. After all, he's alive and literally nobody else is - and he's claiming to have survived because of some special forces of a nation that hasn't had forces on the island in months.

However, all are needed to report for duty:

Armstrong: And - while we're on the subject, Corporal - were it up to me, you'd be stuck here spit-shining latrines until a court-martial deemed you fit for duty. Lucky for you, command doesn't feel likewise. But make no mistake, you fuck up just once - you endanger any of my men - and you're gone.

Not that 'all hands on deck' means you're facing great responsibility, not initially. You're guarding a slum. That is until CSAT attacks, and kills every member of the squad you were in while you were reporting incoming fast boats. You and the remnants of another unit are rescued by the guerrillas you'd previously fought beside. The guerrillas will only fight with you as their liaison, and so you're back in action. What follows is fairly typical war combat whatever as the American forces push back against the AAF and their CSAT support. As you secure an airport however, an earthquake shocks the island, albeit briefly. In the next following missions, earthquakes repeatedly shake the island.

After some more battles - during which you periodically fight with the guerrillas or other American troops - Kerry is informed that the investigation into his conduct in the "Stratis Incident" has finished. He is cleared of any wrongdoing.

The commander still cautions Kerry not to get involved with the "Brits and their black ops bullshit".

During the second to last mission of the third chapter, Kerry suddenly gets a transmission.

It's Lieutenant James, the second-in-command of the CTRG, and he's dying. He broadcasts his coordinates. You have two options.

Keep Kerry's nose out of the Brits and their black ops bullshit.

Respond and see ce quoi the fuck is up.

Endings

Option One

Kerry disregards the message and returns to NATO forces. Obviously you're not the only one who heard it. Your commander compliments you, and assured of your reliability, offers the opportunity to be a major component of the coming battle.

AAF forces are defeated. CSAT withdraws with little to zero fanfare. The AAF and Colonel Akhanteros give their formal surrender, ending the conflict.

Congratulations, Kerry.

This is the canonical route, as DLC and other scenarios depend on this to have gone this route.

Option Two

You've been advised by your new commander to keep your damn nose out of those Brits and their spec-ops bullshit, but, damnit -- the CTRG saved your life! James is your friend, he needs help, he's dying! Sure they're shady and Kerry was never trusted with any info on what they were doing - but…!

Kerry chooses to respond to the distress call. One last angry transmission from your commander ends when Kerry turns off his radio.

From this point on NATO forces will shoot you - you're considered renegade, a deserter.

Kerry finds James. James and his squad of CTRG troops were ambushed by CSAT special forces and destroyed. With his dying breath James requests you deliver a truck loaded with something called the Eastwind Device on it. You have to defeat the remaining CSAT troops, but once you get it, you deliver it to Captain Miller.

Kerry is at the end of his rope. He has come to dislike Miller greatly - but he has still done the bidding of the CTRG like a good puppy desperate for his master's affection.

The video below shows this cutscene in verbatim.

Nonetheless I will write it out, as it provides more context. Kerry drops off the Eastwind Device and approach Captain Miller. Kerry is beginning to connect the dots. This Eastwind Device is what this has all been about! The CTRG did not support the loyalists because their cause was one to believe in. They did not rescue TF Aegis out of the goodness of their hearts. In fact, it's likely the fact they're here at all is the entire reason why this war broke out, as the AAF invasion began within hours of the CTRG arrival.

They used you and your forces as disposable pawns, expending you in different actions to provide themselves opportunities to get at the Eastwind Device. The communications station? It was perfectly fine - the CTRG blew it up to delay NATO's counter-attack so the Eastwind Device remained where it was. Stavrou and the guerillas being blown up by NATO? CTRG passed on faulty information so they could tie up a loose end by getting him killed. NATO forces getting devastated in a major assault against what was supposed to be a lightly armed garrison, but turned out to be the single hardest strongpoint on the island? CTRG passed on faulty info so that CSAT wouldn't evacuate quite so fast.

Kerry's angry as hell, yelling at Miller. As this is happening, CSAT launches a massive assault against the island. Miller, saying "I like you," says that he has to go - but he promises he'll be back in an hour if you stay here.

As the credits begin rolling, over the radio you hear every single American unit you've fought with report that they are being overwhelmed, ending with your commander's broadcast before he too is killed.

CSAT, in trying to get their superweapon back, obliterates an American division. Ergo, in giving the CTRG the Eastwind Device, you just started World War Three.

There's a follow-on mission.

Whereas the previous mission ended in broad daylight, this one begins at 4 AM. CTRG didn't come back. All out war has broken loose and combat rages all over the island. Kerry desperately calls for Miller again. Like a good dog, he's been waiting for evac.

Miller: Kerry? Look, the situation has changed. It's too late. With what we're dealing with here, I simply can't take the risk. I can't return to the warzone. I'm sorry, you're on your own. Kerry: What?! Are you fucking kidding me?! Fuck you, Miller! I risked my ass, saved your life, all for what? A fucking suicide mission?! Miller! Respond! Just what the hell was this all about?! Falcon! Goddamnit, do you read me?! Son of a bitch!

They have abandoned you to die. Miller never intended to return at all.

You? Kerry? The lucky truck driver who always came back from impossible mission after impossible mission? A useful pawn. A gullible idiot. Miller has sabotaged you and yours, used you, TF Aegis, the FIA rebels, all as cannon fodder and distractions for his real objective. Every time you survived another impossible mission he goes, "huh, neat," and sends you out on a new one. Never once allowing you in to the privileged group of CTRG special forces because, even though you're pulling off heroic feats you aren't special forces. They never trusted you. They never were ever going to trust you.

You must find any way to get off the island, and in a remarkable show of giving the player free agency, you can have any escape route. Find a boat and escape on it. Literally just swim for twenty minutes straight. Steal a helicopter. Committing suicide is an option, even. You can also find a couple surviving guerillas and a scant few surviving NATO troops who can join you. Regardless, that's where the main campaign ends on this non-canon route.

Conclusion

The ArmA III campaign focuses on something very rare, both for 2013 when it came out and even still today:

The regular trooper, and what it means to be the outsider looking in on the Special Forces.

In the non-canon ending, the ruthless CTRG operators used Kerry until there was nothing left, and then dangled him out on a dying vine. You aren't SOF.

TF Aegis was a victim of the great power proxy war. Having learned that the CTRG team was after the Eastwind Device, CSAT forced Akhanteros to order the AAF to obliterate TF Aegis, hoping to catch Miller and his team with them. Their lifeline to call for help was destroyed by the CTRG team, to buy time to get at the eastwind device. In so doing they ensured the eventual total annihilation of the TF Aegis survivors.

The FIA rebels were victims of the great power proxy war. Their past connections from previous black-ops before the civil war ended were cruelly pulled to support CTRG in objectives that weren't related to their liberation. Then, when it was clear their existence would only help speed up the AAF destruction and accelerate when the Eastwind Device left the island, they got the rebel commanders killed in a friendly fire incident.

The American troops in the NATO counter-attack were victims of the great power proxy war. In order to get more time to get at the Eastwind Device, CTRG passed along faulty intel that got dozens of them killed in an assault against an AAF strongpoint. In the non-canon route, the entire division form the first casualties of World War Three.

Colonel Akhanteros and the AAF were victims of the great power proxy war no matter what. Forced to attack TF Aegis and invite the unholy wrath of a superpower alliance in return, it ends with their complete destruction and formal surrender. In the non-canon route, they are as good as defeated before CSAT utterly crushes the NATO attack, but it devastates the island in the process. In the canon route, they've been left to hang by CSAT, which withdraws once the Eastwind Device is secure. Even without all that, Altis and Stratis has been the testing ground for an earthquake creating superweapon, used as a pawn by CSAT on the global stage.

Everyone was disposable in the name of the great power proxy war.

You, Corporal Kerry, were disposable.

[aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman]

12 years after the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, I’m still obsessed with his life story. He’s the original Kardashian. Blessed with good looks, he botched himself and pulled a Jocelyn Wildenstein with bad plastic surgery and Botox. WHY did he have to ruin his face lmao??

He made Libya one of the richest countries in Africa with a high GDP, wanted to make a gold-backed dollar instead of fake fiat currency, was a Pan-Africanist who wanted to empower Arabs and Africans alike, had a crew of Amazonian bodyguards, threatened US and European hegemony, pissed off the whole world, was possibly behind the horrendous Lockerbie bombing, was an alleged war criminal, luxurious spender, anti-NATO, so-called terrorist, shit talker at the UN assembly, wanted to create a giant man-made aqueduct to supply water all across Africa, ruled unelected for over 40 years, was ardently pro-Palestine, used too much tax money on his face, and so on.

For anyone interested in MENA geopolitics, Gaddafi is one of the most fascinating mixed bags of the past century. He died beaten to death with a bayonet supposedly shoved up his ass by fake rebels paid by NATO, but in the end he just pissed off Hillary Clinton and Nicolas Sarkozy by wanting to launch the independent African Gold Dinar which would have been backed by his immense reserves of gold; unlike the USA which operates on nonexistent currency.

It’s a complicated story, just like Gaddafi’s complex fashion sense, swift decline in handsomeness to botox pillow face syndrome, and deranged yet occasionally compassionate mind. But it’s definitely an unforgettable story above all. We will never really know the truth about how and why he died, but we can only have an inkling.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

The direction of times arrow and the virtually monotonic increase in earths population and average technological devt and quality of life for the last several hundred years combine strangely to form a situation where much smaller and rustic communities exercise such an outsize influence on contemporary larger developed ones. Its as tho you had a situation in which a bunch of isolated and impoverished backwater hamlets exercised illuminati-like influence over the rest of the world, with minimal reciprocation; the cultural, political, and economic hegemony of bumfuckville over the wider planetary community, their petty internal squabbles and cliques strsightforwardly dictating our own global upheavals and institutions but never or rarely vice versa

Perhaps, if the global population ever really does start to decline and the experience of succeeding more populous past generations comes to be seen as obvious and natural to our descendants as the opposite seems to us their forebears, the strangeness of this current arrangement will stand out properly clearly

[belleandre-belle]

[collapsedsquid]

I’ll conclude by returning to a theme I brought up earlier: the shrunken time horizon of the US ruling class. The current motley crew looks nothing like the set who planned the post-World War II order. They emerged from—or recruits were assimilated to—an ethnically and socially homogenous WASP aristocracy who felt themselves above quotidian distractions and rank commercial temptations. Of course, it was all in the interest of long-term accumulation under US guidance, but it was all successfully planned and executed (at least until things started slipping some in the 1970s). Now with the US in a long process of imperial decline, our planning elite seems fragmented and lost. You have Republicans criticizing Biden for not having shot down the Chinese balloon quickly enough, and Democrats acting as if it was an act of heroism. Our rulers don’t act like they have any good idea about coping with the rise of China, except with bellicose and one hopes ineffectual gestures, because God knows, we don’t want bellicose gestures to lead to an actual war.

And we have a capitalist class that has apparently given up on the future—incapable of dealing with the climate crisis, a truly dire threat, but also consuming capital rather than investing it. Net investment—net, that is, of depreciation—by both business and government—has been falling relative to GDP for decades. The vast flow of free money and 0% interest rates from the Federal Reserve has been channeled into an impressive set of bubbles: the most extended valuations of stocks in US history, crypto, unicorns, housing. It used to be normal to have one particular asset lead the way in a speculative orgy, whether it was stocks in the late 1990s or housing in the following decade. Now we’ve got multiple and serial bubbles that have only been partly deflated by the Fed’s tightening moves of the last year. And Wall Street is dearly hoping the central bank will reverse those moves in a few months and resume the cheap money flow. The bond vigilantes of the 1980s and 1990s, always on the lookout for an inflation that needs to be crushed, have largely disappeared.

I’ll give the last word to Etienne Balibar, who has diagnosed the affliction precisely. “We realize now that our ruling class is no longer a bourgeoisie in the historical sense of the word. It does not have a project of intellectual hegemony nor an artistic point of honor. It needs (or so it thinks) only cost-benefit analyses, “cognitive” educational programs, and committees of experts. That is why, with the help of the pandemic and the internet revolution, the same ruling class is preparing the demise of the social sciences, humanities and even the theoretical sciences.” The bourgeoisie no longer has any civilizational project, national or otherwise. Live for today, and if the water rises, they can just move inland. Or to their underground bunkers.

post-nationalism

[biryukzlodei-artblog]

Two years ago I said that after defeat they would turn to terror. Ukrainians and Europeans are strong and brave against women and children only, as always. For the Russian society, it’s all unpleasant but not deadly. Western wars against Russia have always been like this. They never spared our civilian population. The question is why our society always shows mercy to them. I hope this time we will treat our old enemy without unnecessary humanism. But I doubt it. This damn Soviet noble mentality.

When NATO will stop to exist. It’s never been “Russo-Ukraine” war.

People say global conflicts do not last more than 5 years. People are wrong. Yes, freezing the conflict and moving it to a less hot phase is possible. The Cold War was just a continuation of the Second World War. The Second World War was a continuation of the First World War, and the First World War happened due to the so-called “zero world war” in Crimea. Then, too, all of Europe, led by England and France (dreaming of taking revenge for the defeat of Napoleon and the decline of France as world hegemony) fought with Russian Empire. Then there were Japan and Finland, where the British and Americans used them as proxies to attack Russia. How they use Ukraine today. How tomorrow they will use Eastern European countries, Scandinavian countries or all of them together.

The war will end when Russia destroys the West or is destroyed. After all, Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, we will take our enemies to hell with us in any development of events. The West is doomed, but will fight to the end because without capturing Russian resources it is doomed to degradation and collapse anyway. For the West, this is also a war for the future and for survival. And this war of civilizations has been going on for more than 100 years, sometimes calming down, sometimes flaring up, but never ending.

It's hard to say how many Russians understand this situation fully. Westerners... they have always been hypocritical. They will calmly kill a Russian child so that their child could live. Therefore, I think Western society as a whole knows and understands everything perfectly, but it is convenient for them to pretend that they are “helping Ukraine in the fight for freedom”.

[inqilabi]

With US dollar hegemony declining, the US will see a return of a proper working class as the imperialism created labor aristocracy declines, you return to a proper working class as Marx envisioned and a return to a contradiction between labor & capital I think. It’s like a reversal of what we’ve seen of the last 50 years. But it’s a reversal not the exact opposite. Because 50 years ago you didn’t have the BRICS aligned currency. So it’s basically a negation of negation? Dialectics in action.

What it means for the US is in 10 years it will be extremely hard times for the Americans. A lot of poverty because US has no manf, no agriculture no infrastructure. With that means potential for progress. Because contradictions will be at their heights. But Americans will see times that they have never before seen. America  will no longer be able to export inflation. I just don’t know enough Marxist economics to know exactly how that will pan out and what it will look like if USA cannot export inflation. I do know that it means that USA can no longer manipulate markets, financial ie derivative or even physical resource markets.

[ghelgheli]

What did you think of the 2022-23 protests in Iran? Were they an attempted color revolution? I've seen that argument which is strange but at the same time it seems like any power vacuum would lead to chaos and a US approved puppet taking over so maybe the protesters were wrong even if sincere

i don't know that i can make any claims about "the" protesters being wrong or right—there was never a unified base in the protests that followed the killing of jina emini, and those involved included such varied groups as ethnic minorities demanding autonomy, ethnic persian feminists (sometimes bourgeoisie) claiming the struggle for themselves, working class demonstrators connecting the ethnic struggle to a broader labour struggle, anarchist blocs protesting the state as a whole, various intersections of these, and yes, certainly some who would have been pushing for american interventionism and something that you might call a colour revolution. in pretty much all of these cases we are talking about causes with long continuity, connected to ongoing movements protesting e.g. the rapidly worsening economic conditions under sanctions and inflation, water food and fuel scarcity, women's and lgbt struggles... the killing was a flashpoint but i do not think i can talk about the subsequent protests in isolation. some of the protesters may have been well-intentioned but ideologically misled, and i am sure that plenty of others knew exactly what it is they needed to do

in any case, what concerns me are claims to the effect of the one here, that revolutionary action is too risky as it will compromise the strength of the iranian state and invite american intervention. i don't know that i'd call myself a third-worldist, but this is strikes me as the precise converse of third-worldism, i.e. the claim that there is no revolutionary potential in the global south until the global north is unseated from its hegemony. and that is imo just wrong. the IRI, as a country with a pretty straightforwardly capitalist economy which has spent the last century undergoing massive industrialization and corresponding urbanization + proletarianization, can only transition into a socialist mode of production by a revolution. afaik the present state of labour organization is very weak, but to take a principled opposition to revolution because it would invite the US to assert its power is pessimistic in the extreme, fatalistic even.

it is the nature of revolutionary struggle in the global south that everything that is done must take into account the omnipresent threat of imperialism, but that is not to say that this is impossible. the '79 revolution was itself an anti-imperialist success, for all of its failures. i don't think revolution is coming soon to iran, but nor do i think it has to wait for the further decline of the usamerican empire; in fact, i think it can play a role in this decline, eventually

[bogusfilth]

showing up to the discussion class that's supposed to be about technological/gdp growth stagnation since 1970 and just telling everyone it's actually reflective of a long-run decline in US hegemony