poland is a backwards catholic theocracy.

i don't want to be like poland, and i don't want to "catch up" to polish spending on guns.

when will poland catch up to canada on per capita health care spending?

Canada's per capita healthcare spending is substantially higher than Poland's, with recent estimates placing Canada's spending around $8,740 (2023) compared to Poland's approximately $1,544 (2023) or $2,925 (2022 PPP adjusted). 

a society that spends more on guns than hospitals is a backwards society.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-poland-military-spending-1.7621840

russia, iran and india, together, are not really "eastern" countries, but represent the eastern boundary of western civilization. all three nations and cultures are fundamentally western societies.

as we are heading towards a major war with china, putting sanctions on india was very stupid. the chinese have predictably responded by trying to pull the indians in closer.

if we want to win a fight with china, we require russia to be on our side, or we will lose. the indians are not as pivotal, but it would be easier with them on the side of the west than the east. 

both russia and india know what side they're on and want to tilt westwards, but america and europe are making it impossible, to their own eventual demise.

like many leftists, i had some cautious optimism for bolivarianism as devised by hugo chavez, but maduro is not an appropriate successor. from what i can tell, claims of rigged elections are mostly propaganda, although the revolt by the small venezuelan upper middle class against the much larger working class is very real. maduro does seem to retain popular support overall, despite being extremely unpopular with the wealthy. maduro is being targeted as a russian proxy, like assad was; it has nothing to do with democracy, it's a part of this post cold war clean up operation that's been underway since 2003 and has resulted in the americans removing about a dozen russian-backed dictators or democracies (the form of government doesn't matter and it isn't what this is about) and replacing them with washington aligned autocrats. the orwellian irony is that while the governments removed have sometimes been democratic, the united states always replaces them with obedient dictators.

i don't have the intellectual support for maduro that i did for assad, who i think should have been allowed to carry out his reforms. the best way to a stable, democratic syria was through assad. as expected, the americans (via turkey) replaced him with a bloodthirsty islamic fascist nazi dictator, which assad wasn't. the new regime in syria is everything america falsely accused the old regime of being.

maduro isn't worth supporting and should really resign. if he had some democratic legitimacy at one point, he's been president too long and needs to move on.

the americans just announced a major weapons deal with the europeans to supply ukraine with weapons.

this is a rational and expected response.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g614x9kqko

The Generalplan Ost (German pronunciation: [ɡenəˈʁaːlˌplaːn ˈɔst]; lit. 'Master Plan for the East'), abbreviated GPO, was Nazi Germany's plan for the settlement and "Germanization" of captured territory in Eastern Europe, involving the genocide, extermination and large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs, Eastern European Jews, and other indigenous peoples of Eastern Europe categorized as "Untermenschen" in Nazi ideology.[7][5] The campaign was a precursor to Nazi Germany's planned colonisation of Central and Eastern Europe by Germanic settlers, and it was carried out through systematic massacres, mass starvations, chattel labour, mass rapes, child abductions, and sexual slavery.[8][9]

Generalplan Ost was only partially implemented during the war in territories occupied by Germany on the Eastern Front during World War II, resulting indirectly and directly in the deaths of millions by shootings, starvation, disease, extermination through labour, and genocide. However, its full implementation was not considered practicable during major military operations, and never materialised due to Germany's defeat.[10][11][12] Under direct orders from Nazi leadership, around 11 million Slavs were killed in systematic violence and state terrorism carried out as part of the GPO. In addition to genocide, millions more were forced into slave labour to serve the German war economy.[5]

The program's operational guidelines were based on the policy of Lebensraum proposed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten (drive to the East) ideology of German expansionism. As such, it was intended to be a part of the New Order in Europe.[13] Approximately 3.3 million Soviet POWs captured by the Wehrmacht were killed as part of the GPO. The plan intended for the genocide of the majority of Slavic inhabitants by various means – mass killings, forced starvations, slave labour and other occupation policies. The remaining populations were to be forcibly deported beyond the Urals, paving the way for German settlers.[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost

the politician apparently assassinated by the russians was literally the founder of the ukrainian nationalist socialist, or nazi, party. it's about time, and i'm glad they got him.

ukraine has a very weird history with nazism. one might expect ukrainians to be reflexively opposed to an ideology that ranks exterminating them to generate lebensraum as one of it's primary priorities, but the ukrainians were fighting against stalin, and they wanted to get rid of their own jews, as well. if the nazis had actually managed to win against russia, the ukrainian nazi collaborators would have been the first to go. you can't really make sense of it other than trying to put your self in a position where you have to choose between hitler and stalin and cannot choose a third option. it's one or the other, and these ukrainian groups were going to end up dead, either way. would you rather be killed by hitler or stalin? it's beyond faustian; it's more like a mass shooting in modern america, followed by imminent suicide.

it doesn't make sense, but it's real: there are a lot of nazis in ukraine. this guy was organizing them. he had to go.

like they say - the only good nazi is a dead nazi.