Right, there’s no permanent solution to this issue while the working class is not in control of the state, because ultimately it’s the state which sets the value of fiat currency. If we win the fight to get a Taler-like system recognized as an official one, it would be as difficult to get rid of it as it is to ban cash right now.

There are digital payment schemes that would be completely anonymous for the vast majority of consumers, like GNU Taler. Support an implementation of it in your country. Cash is dying because of how inconvenient it is, we must build something that has the convenience of digital payments while also preserving privacy, there’s no other way.

I do agree that it is all very novel and weird. However, the show of force for European oligarchs is the most convincing reasoning to me.

From a purely financial standpoint it’s a big investment with unclear returns. Natural resources there are difficult & expensive to extract (first of all, there’s no infrastructure), expensive to transport, and it will take a very long time to recoup the costs of a full-blown invasion; neither fascists nor capitalists think on such timescales. In terms of projecting power on Russia, it’s also dubious because US already has a military base in Greenland and could probably expand it quite a lot before Denmark would start seriously opposing it. And in any case I don’t think Trump’s admin is too worried about Russia at this point.

Meanwhile, European oligarchs are not happy about Trump trying to meddle directly on their political turf, supporting far-right parties and so on. As a result, EU is currently slowly distancing itself from US. There have been some mildly worded letters about the Gaza genocide and the Venezuela thing. EU is already trying to decouple from the US tech-wise, it has been trying to build its own defense pact, etc.

A drone strike campaign, Navy blockade, 1-day special forces operation to depose and kidnap the government, an amerikkan flag over Trumptown (previously known as Nuuk), and an island-sized military base with ICBMs 10 minutes away from any European capital sound like convincing arguments to stop even thinking about disobedience. It would also help with scaring everyone else too - as a russian saying goes - beat up your friends to instill fear in your enemies. Again, I’m not sure this is how it would work out were it to happen, but the fascists tend to think this way.

To me it feels like the least improbable of all reasons.

Of course it’s also possible that this is just Trump and Miller blabbering about their wet dreams and the oligarchs won’t let them do it.

Greenland has nowhere to hide

While it’s not as big as it looks on Mercaator-projected maps, it is still pretty huge and full of empty nothing covered in snow. There is plenty of space to hide if you know how to survive.

no way to deliver weapons and only 60,000 inhabitants.

Both of these are true, but you shouldn’t underestimate what a determined guerilla force of 30000 can do with small arms and explosives. The US won’t be able to send 2 million able-bodied men there either, it’s not the 60s anymore.

The only question is whether Greenlanders hate the US enough. For now I don’t think they do, which is why I also believe that a one-day “special military operation” is the most likely outcome.

Why would you believe anything at face value during times of hybrid war?

They are not only words. Look at the massive budget cuts to propaganda ops/USAID, and the damage to supply chains and trading partnerships done by tariffs (and especially the way they were negotiated). Even the words themselves do matter, they are destroying what’s left of the so-called “rules-based order” in the minds of people around the world. They clearly gave up on soft imperialism.

The US have one objective: contain China.

Those are not mutually exclusive. The current government thinks they can contain China militarily. The general direction can be seen quite clearly. Enhance domestic oil extraction and get a reliable supply from South America as a complement (oil is the prime energy source for war, after all). Get their european vassals back in line with a show of force. Pump their asian vassals full of weapons to project power. Destroy Chinese economic influence (belt&road or otherwise) by invading/couping anyone who dares to ally with China (unless they have nukes).

I hope it doesn’t work out that way but this seems to be the plan.

But afterwards. Ukraine was prepared.

Greenland also has plenty of guns, the natives are very accustomed to cold and snow, and the people there increasingly hate the US. The logistics would also be difficult for the US because they don’t have a land border. If Greenlanders decide to fight back, and Europe backs them up even the same amount as Ukraine, it might be a long and bloody affair for the US. You don’t actually need advanced military tech to fight imperialist invaders from afar on your home turf, look at Vietnam.

This won’t happen. Ukraine happened to split Europe from Russia.

China would make Europe reconcile with Russia.

China is not some staunch ally of Russia, I can see why that connection is usually made, but it’s just not true. They are simply non-interventionist and will trade with whoever trades with them. China refuses to sell most military equipment or dual-use commodities to Russia, and they are Ukraine’s biggest trade partner.

Allying with China is the most logical thing for the EU as a whole to do right now. They are a predictable, reasonable, stable partner with a huge industrial base. They are also leading the world in fossil fuel alternatives for energy generation, which is urgently needed to fix the climate crisis, and is especially poignant for Europe because it needs to shake off the dependency on Russian gas.

The only reason it’s not happening right now is that EU oligarchs are scared shitless of actual socialism, because they correctly surmise that it will be the end of their dictatorship on people. US is already doing their best to force their hand, let’s hope it hastens their demise.

The US won’t take Greenland if the EU would turn to China.

With the current fascists in charge I’m not so sure. They think they can replace soft, economic imperialism with sheer military might, this is what is being said verbatim by Miller and implicitly by Trump, and all their other actions point to it as well. I hope it backfires badly.

I don’t think there’s a need to be this condescending.

When Russia started the big invasion of Ukraine, the first thing I said in the morning was “fuck”. The second was “well, at least it will be over in a couple of days”. Because of course it will be, Russia is 4 times the population, has a bigger industrial base, a significant technological advantage, a giant land border with plenty of logistical connections, and nobody has given Ukraine any material support during the Crimea thing. And yet we’re coming up to the end of the fourth year of war with no end in sight for now. Plenty of europeans volunteered to help, some of them were nazis who wanted to kill russians, for sure, but not all of them.

And remember that Ukraine was barely considered Europe at that point, it’s still not in the EU or NATO.

So while I also think the most likely outcome is either a “sale” of some kind, or a bloodless 1-day “special military operation” and strong-worded letters, I won’t dismiss other possibilities straight out of the gate.

It will definitely speed up Europe’s decoupling from the US, and the only viable alternative partner is China, which would be a massive win for European communist and socialist parties. In the long term it will also speed up the destruction of the US empire’s power, which is a massive win for proletariat everywhere.

Heh, that is really quite old. There might be a chance.

See if you can get by with a combination of Krita and GIMP. The former especially has improved a lot lately and is now a fairly professional tool.

New-ish versions of Photoshop are very difficult to run in WINE (which allows you to run some Windows apps natively - it’s the thing that powers all recent linux gaming advances). The best you can do is run it in a VM with a window passthru, like so: https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps

Depends on what you need from your computer. If it’s just web browsing and some light “office-like” tasks, it’s very easy, especially if you’ve interacted with a computer before. If you need some specialized hardware support or rely on some complicated proprietary app (looking at you Adobe), it can get complicated quickly.

In any case there will be some pain as you get accustomed to the new OS. But overall it’s not as bad as it used to be.

Oh my, I hope she knows how to sed the release name in /etc/apt, or else it’s very out of date by now…

Yeah, agreed. Hence

Consider other peoples of the world as equals and allies rather than dumb weaklings to be taught a lesson and/or exploited.

TBH the change can be pretty small, albeit revolutionary.

Actually embrace the humanitarian values of enlightenment. Gain some class consciousness. Remove the dictatorship of the capital by seizing the means of production. Consider other peoples of the world as equals and allies rather than dumb weaklings to be taught a lesson and/or exploited.

It all fits in a very long and established european tradition. Remember that Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Kropotkin, and Lenin were all europeans.

Moving to the Netherlands would paradoxically allow you to be high enough away.

No experience with kids in Vietnam, but the country is really nice. Not too sure about the safety nets in case you lose a job, especially since it would also mean you lose your residence permit…

As for europe, I think it will do reasonably fine for the next ~30 years, the decline of capitalism will be slower than in the US because it has at least some regulation in place to slow down the wealth inequality explosion. The quality of life is better than Vietnam, especially outside big cities. Practically speaking, I’d trust the safety net more too, at least for the near future. Racism depends on the country, I think your kid would do fine in most. The main drawbacks are of course that the safety net and quality of life is funded by imperialism (some from gnarly neo-colonial imperialism, looking at you France, others just economic exploitation of the global south), and that the capitalist system will decay there eventually too.

A couple years ago, they couldn’t even provide the token military support for a long-time ally, almost-neighbor, and main stronghold in the Caucasus - Armenia - in what was basically a more-or-less righteous (even if legally dubious) defensive war against Azerbaijan. Instead the few russian troops already stationed there just withdrew in an orderly fashion. This resulted in quite a serious anti-Russian shift in the country, so much so that they basically withdrew from CSTO, and are starting to consider leaving the EEU and joining the EU.

Do you seriously think they would be able to provide meaningful support for Iran, against the US?

I can’t answer for the rest of the world, will trust the US again when it abolishes capitalism and makes sure that wealth/power can not be hoarded by private individuals or unaccountable organizations. This is the only solution. Everything you propose is just a bandaid on a gaping wound that is the dictatorship of capital; it doesn’t really matter how effective or competent the governance structure is, as long as it is subservient to a few billionaire oligarchs.

I mean, good for him. China, Europe et al ought to seize this opportunity to invest in those organizations for the betterment of humanity, without constant impediments by the US.

We may kick them out every other 4 years but the American public is stupid and easily forgets.

No, it’s more than that. The opposition (i.e. Democrats) is paid for by a group of oligarchs largely overlapping with those who pay the fascists, and fights tooth and nail to keep the american people poor and obedient. They might not be as mask-off about their imperialism, and they might allow some leeway for minorities, but they are fundamentally in service to the same group of people. The average american will not see significant economic improvements when they vote for Dems again; so, ever more angry and upset about the deteriorating living conditions, they will continuously vote for “the other party”.

Now is the time to realize that there will not be a solution to this crisis while your country is still ruled by oligarchs, as it has been since the founding. You will need to destroy the root cause of the issue, the unbounded exponential accumulation of wealth - a.k.a. capitalism - in order to see meaningful progress.

LMAO, US is literally the original fascist country that the nazis tried to emulate with lebensraum. It is the most evil entity on this planet to date.

putin’s russia supporting some marginalized neonazis to destabilize europe is nothing compared to the dozens of literal fascist coups staged and puppeteered by the US starting way before putin was even born.

Now the citizens of the empire are reaping what the oligarchs of old have sowed with quiet support from the liberals. Fascism is simply coming back home.

There is a difference yes

Ok, point out the material difference between war crimes conducted by obama and trump. “Decorum” or “justifications” don’t count as material differences.

trump is worse on many other topics, from outright fascism in the US to openly supporting fascists abroad to cutting USAID and such, but in terms of military action this administration is mostly just following the long-established bipartisan war crime traditions.