i know. and committee is an anglo-french adaptation from latin meaning "entrust/coming together", with diffferent meanings over centuries. in long past decades "soviet" has acquited a very specific connotation that you are using now to describe current institutions in a way that makes no sense. it is my impression that this is to rescue that old narrative and clichés which have really no relation to a present reality that is somehow uncomfortable to confront.

the world is already multipolar, and the whole friction comes from one "pole" not coming to terms with that reality.

i doubt china will enter any war whatsoever if they can avoid it. if they do you should be scared. china actually wants worldwide stability (ergo peace) which is the best scenario for them to thrive. the one thing china depends on is a working global economy. which is what some (not chinese) people seem to be trying to harm or destroy, one could only wonder why ...

gosh ... that's really some wishful thinking. or ... where do you get your news from? centcom? truth social? X'D

dunno, could that be the reason why he appointed a leading economist as minister of defense back in 2024?

ofc, i know, i know, russia is imploding, they're running out of troops, the strait is open, iran is obliterated ... ok. let's see about all that ...

i'm not really sure what you are trying to say, but it's nevertheless ironic that you support it by bringing up a public hearing by the security council precisely at the timestamp where shoigu (the defense minister) briefs the council on the (western) ukranian's warcrimes on (eastern) ukranians, shelling them and leaving them without water and gas.

i'm going to go out on a limb: you are implying that putin is a dictator who hid behind institutional theatre (that you somehow identify as "soviet") to justify his personal thirst for imperialist expansion. mkay ...

btw john mearsheimer has now his own youtube channel! his first lecture is an overview of his theory about conventional deterrence and how that theoretical framework explains russia's invasion of ukraine in 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

what comitee? technically how?

Criminal Investigation Opened
February 2026
Decision-maker: Federal Security Service (FSB).

Official Summons Delivered
April 2026
Decision-maker: Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) / FSB.

Terrorism Facilitation Charges & International Arrest Warrant
July 29, 2026
Decision-maker: Federal Security Service (FSB) in coordination with Russian State Prosecutors.

unlike other orgs, the fsb reports directly to putin. i thought he was a wannabe imperialist now? is someone here living 30 years in the past or are we just mixing mutually exclusive narratives for fun?

soviet-sponsored! in 2026 ... that's some vintage brain kink, props to your delicate tastes, sir.

that whitewashing was already pathetic the first time around, or was that to keep up with the slashdottical duplication tradition?

you know what taints hands with blood? genocide.

who would still get surprised by die-hard usraelians (and westerners in general) cheerfully endorsing targeted assasinations, terrorist attacks, mass killings, mass starvation etc as the fully justified routine work of god but get all riled up when someone has de gall and the utter disrespect of fighting back and, god forbid, one of their god-chosen precious citizens gets hurt. intolerable! who do these vile untermenschen think they are to fight back? well, fuck around and find out, i guess, and "thank you for your service".

nice strawman. run the numbers on un special reports, freedomhouse, global assasinations monitor, heck, even wikipedia ... if these sources are any speculation it is clearly western "liberal" curated speculation. in the process you'll also discover that "x has assasinated x outside x before, it would be unsurprising if they did it again" holds actually true for a very long list of x, so that nonsensical statement is just an embarrassingly stupid attempt at being facetious, mr drinky loomer.

the current record holders for high profile assasinations abroad are israel and the us, in that order and far ahead of anyone else. just saying, you do you.

i hear you mumbling: "but, but, they're all republicans!!!!". oh, kid ...

i guess it's more complicated than that. i would assume he's a western agent now, considering events like his catch-and-release by french authorities, his residence and that photo. who knows! he could be a double agent! then again telegram has been (and is being) used by many different parties, from russian troops to ukranian terrorists to cia to pedophiles to cryptobros to activists to nazis to a big chunk of regular people. i use it as a source of real-time news and it's quite good at that.

yeah, cool. a boss move that could backfire for a moment of glory. that finger isn't directed at putin but at russian courts and this "news" doesn't represent a particular event or decision, but rather russian courts just doing their job. they are slow but methodical and have a long memory. he didn't need to do that, he created a great tool and got both flak and prestige for it, and got rich, i don't know how this would help him. imo this reaction could be the mark of the genius's demise.

ofc he has little to fear as long as he is out of reach but ... dubai of all places? he might be betting on the wrong number, color and parity ...

same as always: if you are not paying, you are the product ...

which makes sense, as does the fact that if there are more discoveries (through llm) there will be proportionally more exploits (surfaced or not). so the news seems to be that the hype was just hype but there is still a reasonable concern ... who would have thunk!

I may be vile and pernicious but you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious with the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get, have you guessed me, yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out from your TV set

habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein kommunist ...

https://platform.theverge.com/...

symbolic acts are quite common in human history to this day, i doubt there is a single civilization or even country you couldn't ridicule and mock on that basis. otoh ... there's no confirmation whatsoever of that story except herodotus who had reasons to hate the persians, so his account might be very distorted or even straight out fake "news".

yeah, sorry for the cheekiness. i later checked your other posts and realized you were actually serious.

anyway, i don't find that binary distinction really useful, it is very simplistic and lends itself to ... binary perception: republic good, anything else bad. death to the king! governance has actually many forms and power even more so, being fluid even inside concrete forms of governments. in the end the whole world is governed by various power groups and the institutions in which they operate are just the framework. different frameworks, different tools, different external outlook, same objectives and internal forces.

incidentally, as an european (at some point supportive of the eu, not anymore) i have never heard the eu referred to as a republic, and it doesn't really make sense. the eu isn't even a state, it's an ad-hoc agglomerate with very different interests and a comparatively very short history. if you ask me it is evolving towards totalitarianism.

dunno, am i?

wait ... let me re-read the whole thing, it's a whopping 2 sentences and 27 words. i guess if i were saying that the eu is a monarchy i would have mentioned the word "monarchy" at some point, but i don't think i did. did i? hmmm ... what do you think?

the eu is not a republic by any definition.

you might think of it like one in a metaphorical sense, but there is a ... huge massive difference.