Milos Uzelac

From a Bloomberg article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-18/xi-crackdowns-look-to-whip-china-s-lying-flat-youth-into-shape In Xi's China, the ideal child, “The socialist successor of the new era, does not attend after-school tutoring, does not play video games, does not chase celebrities…finish all their homework at school, read…Xi’s selected works for one hour everyday…urge their parents to have more children.” “There is this dilemma as everyone wants to have white-collar jobs, wants their children to have white-collar jobs, but the society’s labor market needs to have people at the lower end…There needs to be a lot of laborers for child care and senior care.” There is a spectre haunting the world, the spectre of blue stage consciousness not being integrated into the orange rationalist global culture now shaping much of the world through the Internet and Western liberal business culture, and therefore now we have this blue consciousness shadow backlash attempted to be authoritatively implemented in China to act as model for education in the developing world to counteract this not fully integrated orange stage consciousness shock spread through the globe through the global business culture, entertainment industry and the Internet, in my view how to view this development and response in China.

*Last Post on this Account* From Wikipedia: ''Coping means to invest one's own conscious effort, to solve personal and interpersonal problems, in order to try to master, minimize or tolerate stress and conflict. The psychological coping mechanisms are commonly termed coping strategies or coping skills. A coping skill is a behavioral tool which may be used by individuals to offset or overcome adversity, disadvantage, or disability without correcting or eliminating the underlying condition.'' 8.24.2021. I think and feel more now more often, than not, of blowing my brains and head out and losing everything. That’s the thought pattern I am having in my head when typing this. I feel constant pain, suffering, and pressure in my head which translates into some chronic state of fatigue and tiredness of living out and performing the duties I have in my life or living day to day life itself and not wanting to narcosis myself into a drifting and fleeting dreamlike sleep condition where there that pressure, fatigue, tiredness and anxiety and pain isn't present and felt in my head and more broadly life experiencing and being motivated and disciplined to undertake tasks and challenges that are the first stepping stones towards what I see as being my potential purpose and role in this life and existence. I have created a miserable, selfish life for myself in the past couple of months filled with regrets, addictions, suffering, and a deep sense of loss, fatigue, and wasted potential. That’s usually what I feel and think about in a pattern consistently now every single day in the past months and what I repressed and deliberately forgotten about because of all the problems, trauma, and suffering I’ve let accumulated over the last years when I started failing and not passing enough exams on university each year. I don’t what else to write out of the top of my head other than I feel and think that addressing and fixing all these accumulated problems, addictions sufferings, issues, and traumas one by one and one at the time will really push and require effort on my part and on the part of my will to live and make my life more enjoyable and, happy. This is just a scrape of the cope journal to get and force me to write out my thought and feelings from this point onwards to better understand them and appreciate them and cast light on the repressed, accumulated problems, traumas, issues, and selfishness that is making not only my experience of life miserable, petty, sad, insufferable and numbing but also the expectations of my future experience of life anxiety and fear-filled of causing me even more suffering, misery, humiliation and making my current existence not worth living and resiliently struggling through with the aim to recover my dignity, self-worth, self-confidence, and strength as a human being and his life experiences up until this point and rid myself of the regret obsessed psyche, thought pattern and feelings on what I missed on, wasted on, and spit on as potential and actualizing reality up until this point in my life. What do I want to do and accomplish in the future remaining years of my life? I want to most abstractedly and, not concretely write something that I feel is important to me and how I view and relate to the world and rest of society and actually pen it as an author so people can read it and get some insights and help for themselves from it. That’s what I feel would be deeply fulfilling for my experience of life and myself and how I would live my life from that point onwards. Edit: I will probably see to make a new account in order to anonymously be able to express and address these long procrastinated issues and problems head-on, more confidently, honestly, in-detail and without fear and anxiety that someone I know in my real-life surroundings and acquaintance network might find this (and given my account name being my real-life first and last name) use it against me personally or in a social circle or environment or as an excuse to alienate themselves from me. That's all. I will see to it to transferring some of my journals from this account bearing my real-life first and last name to that more anonymous online, new account and start writing this journal again there and posting on this forum from that new account, I won't be leaving this forum and space altogether since I see it as important support virtual structure to be able to plow through and overcome all these accumulated problems, suffering and issues that are right in front of me and that I have to face at some point, sooner rather than later. I will DM later someone from the mods to see if this account can be hidden, locked, or banned to prevent people from having access to it or even seeing it if possible. I should and had it in mind a long while ago of doing this but I procrastinated on it out of distraction and forgetfulness and taking personal development of myself and my deteriorating life situation seriously. Until posting from my new account I wish everyone here farewell who followed me and interacted with me on this account and see you soon on the next one. I wish you all continued good luck and spirit in your self-actualization and self-realization efforts as a part of Leo's community and on this forum. That's all from me for now.

"With the rise of modernity and the abolition of the Ancien regime in Europe, centuries old traditions and habits of life, together with a common sense of meaning, broke down. People were forced from their own land, removed from traditional ways of life and thrown into the horrors of modern industrial regimes. To be a socialist, simply meant to recognize the social crisis or as it was called then 'the social question'. Out of this recognition sprung various figures, cults and movements offering their own peculiar solutions. Ranging from establishment of various communes to those seeking a return to feudal relations. Communist manifesto discusses many of these tendencies: reactionary socialism, petty bourgeois socialism, feudal socialism, German 'true' socialism, conservative socialism, critical-utopian socialism In light of this, Marx and Engels offered their own unique and unprecedented approach to the social question, which came to be known as scientific socialism. However to ask a definition of this socialism would be antithetical to the very socialism Marx and Engels imbued meaning to, for as Engels in Anti-Duhring noted: "To science definitions are worthless, because always inadequate. The only definition is the development of the thing itself, but this is no longer a definition." With regards to Marx's work specifically he had this to say, Engels Preface to Capital, Vol. 3: "[We should not expect to find] fixed, cut-to-measure, once and for all, applicable definitions in Marx's work. It is self-evident that we're things and their interrelations conceived, not as fixed, but as changing their mental images, the ideas are likewise subject to change and transformation and are not encapsulated in rigid definitions, but are developed in their historical and logical process of formation." Marx criticized in his own time such definition mongering, as evident in his response to Proudhon in the Poverty of Philosophy: "To try to give the definition of property as an independent relation, a category apart, as an abstract and eternal idea can be nothing but an illussion of metaphysics and jurisprudence." Marx would always start with a complete analysis of a concrete situation and would only then arrive at some contingent and continual definition or principle: Engels, Anti-Duhring: "The principles are not the starting point of an investigation, but their final result; they are not applied to nature and human history but abstracted from them, it is not nature and the realm of man that conform to these principles, but rather the principles are only valid as in so far they are in conformity with nature and history." Therefore, after doing a complete historical analysis and theoretical work would Marx sum up his results but only provisional. It was a given to him that definitions and principles cannot exhaust the meaning of a thing one is trying to define, the real premises of what one is trying to define always escape the definition. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology: "The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and both those produced by their activity." In other words, for Marx the foremost appearance of socialism depend on historical, civilizational, geopolitical and economic circumstances of the population, their level of development and organizational structure, as well as complete needs of the people among other things, only then after careful, empirical analysis of these circumstances would Marx make pronouncements whether something is socialist or not, reactionary or progressive. Marx sought to locate and distill contradictions, and therefore possibilities of building a common sense of sociality in each country and according to each countries conditions of existence. Marx and Engels, Letter to Domela Nieuwenhuis: "The thing to be done in any definite given moment of the future, the thing immediately to be done, depends of course entirely on the given historical conditions in which one has to act. But this question is really in the clouds and therefore is really the statement of a phantom problem to which the only answer can be - the criticism of the question itself." Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: "[V]ery anticipation of yet to be proven results seems to be disrupting to me, and the reader who wants to follow me at all must resolve to ascend from the particular to the general. " To have a ready made formula, a rigid definition or a formalised concept first, and then judge reality by the standards of such abstraction is something that Marx viciously fought against through his entire life. It is one of the way in which he criticized Hegel and the young Hegelians in his Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right: "Hegel develops his thinking not out of the object, rather he develops the object in accordance with ready-made thinking out together in the abstract sphere of logic." Proceeding this way means thinking in a very sterile way, in a way which can give birth to already dead conclusions. It can lead only to the most sadistic rectification of the actual lived reality, in the name of grey and dull abstractions. The appreciation of actually well put human history and of all the treasures of mankind are foreclosed, and for what? For the moral satisfaction of crucifying the reality of the people. As we can see this is npt how Marx thought and approached reality, for him, socialism had nothing to do with any imagined utopia or any other abstraction. It has nothing to do with the way people understand classless, moneyless, stateless society or worker's ownership of the means of production is nothing more than a dead abstraction. The bourgeois ideologues had fantastical ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity that realized themselves historically through revolutionary dictatorship and terror, and subsequently with Bonapartist consolidation, Marx did not only judge reality by the standards of these fantastical ideas, but actually recognised this reality as the objective truth behind these ideas themselves. For Marx, the beautiful utopias and the moral prescriptions are contradicted by actual reality so much worse than the former, in this context Marx said: "But had any eighteenth-century Frenchmen the faintest idea, a priori, of the way in which the demands of the French bourgeoisie would be accomplished? The doctrinaire and necessarily fantastic anticipations of the programme of action of the revolution of the future only divert us from the struggle of the present." Source: Marx's response to other forms of socialism and the answer to the 'social question' itself was not another utopia, but an entirely different approach to this question in the first place. Instead of judging the world by the standards of ready made abstraction, Marx recognised that such procedure leads to impotent arrogance at beast or genocidal chauvinism at worst. For Marx socialism generally meant an open-ended process as far as its particularties were concerned. It was not a moral concept but a scientific one. Socialism meant reclaiming some sort of meaning and common sociality after modernity while still retaining fidelity to this modernity itself. It was about refounding modernity on a new basis. But as far as for the particular idioms of socialism, Marx claimed little can be said: Engels, Letter to Otto von Boenigk: "The so-called socialist society is not anything immutable. Like all other social formations it should be considered in a state of constant flux and change. It's crucial difference from the present order lies naturally in production organized on the basis of common ownership by the nation of all means of production." Therefore when Marx tried to sum up his understanding of socialism and communism, he would say that: Marx and Engels, The German Ideology: "Communism for us is not the the state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal by which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which sublates the present state of things. The conditions of this movement arise from the premises now in existence." Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge: "[Communists] develop new principles for the world out of the world's own principles. We don't not say to the world: Cease your struggles they are foolish, we will give you the true slogans of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something it must acquire, even if it doesn't want to." To an extent Marx talked about future socialist society at all he did so negatively not positively or prescriptively, for Marx communism was not an utopia but something imminently practical within the context of an independent proleterian party. Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge: "I am therefore not in favor of hoisting a dogmatic banner. Quite the reverse. We must help the dogmatists clarify their ideas." In this spirit to clarify the idea of extending the ideas of liberalism - liberty, fraternity and equality - what isn't recognized here is that this extension is entirely dependent on liberalisms sublation (aufheben), that is to say a certain kind of break from that very liberalism where it completely changes its form. Some sort of recognition of this fact was not only common to Marx but to all socialists through history. In the universal application of these principles of liberalism implies a fundamental break from how these very principles manifest themselves. Marx already criticized these notions in his own time, he clarified to such dogmatists that when you simply talk about extensions of principles of bourgeois society, instead of their sublation, that is refounding them on a new basis, you are essentially defending the existing establishment, because it is only on the basis of this existing establishment that the illusion of universalization of existing liberalism seems possible. Engels, Anti-Duhring: "Our ideologist may turn and twist as he likes, but the historical reality which he casts out of the door comes in again at the window, and while he thinks he is framing a doctrine of morals and laws for all time and for all worlds, he is in fact only fashioning an image of the conservative or revolutionary tendencies of his own time, an image which is distorted because it is torn from its real basis, and like a reflection in a concave mirror, standing on its head." Marx, Poverty of Philosophy "X does not see that this egalitarian relation, this corrective idea he would like to apply to the world, is itself a reflection of nothing but the actual world, and that therefore it is totally impossible to reconstitute society on a basis which is nothing but an embellished shadow of it. In proportion as the shadow becomes embodied again we perceive that this body, far from being a dreamt transfiguration of it, is the actual body of existing society."

Wasn't impartial in Korea though but ok I am understanding the point you are trying to make.

Danke for the link, was skeptical in the beginning of the sources in the post. There seems to be very contrasting almost mutually exclusive claims forwarded by various people when it comes to this topic. Read a part of it will make sure to read it whole.

Heh the same fate fell upon a lot of the most developed and educated people of the former Yugoslav republics in the past decades, however there were some return migrations of those people that have migrated to Western countries to invest in here or build businesses or to pursue a career in domestic politics by the virtue of their expertise knowledge and credentials. A weird archetypal unconscious pattern repeat of the South Slav migrational historical story from the past as I see it. Migrate elsewhere then reimigrate here.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and analysis on Chinese society from a on the ground empirical standpoint of living there. Much appreciated!

I'll admit I am slightly biased and optimistic about it given my countries current level of development and destroyed and weak almost non-existent domestic industrial base (it relies primarily on foreign Western investors and companies), and hopeful this model might be exported elsewhere in the developing world to provide a solid stage blue consciousness foundation for those societies, that can then slowly integrate orange stage consciousness via the Internet and the online global and digital markets. My only worry is for the Chinese youth and eventual new work force to not become to dogmatist, uncritical and subservient to their system as a result to sort of reinvent the war communism mobilisation and Soviet interventionism ideal of the Cold War of those people because of the dogmatism they were instilled upon and taught to learn and swore allegiance to in their relationship to their territorial claims and the developing world in their counteracting against Western business monopoly and presence there and for that to spiral into conflicts in those regions (I am thinking mostly about Africa) similar as was in the case of the Cold War in China's military aid and training in North Korea and Vietnam, where those regions became battlegrounds because of different visions of foreign superpowers for their developmental path.

Don't though when viewing or posing any of these questions forget about or overlook the not so glorious past history of these foundational international organizations when considering about their future. For example the impartiality of the UN military coalition in the Korean War, unwillingness and refusal to admit China into its Security Council ranks up until the 1970s up until its economic opening to the West, their failures to stop a genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and its failure to stop or curb war crimes in Bosnia during the same period to mention but a few historical examples.

A lot of interesting info and quotes in these documentaries combined with the omissions of some important events and key details. Slightly biased in favor of the West and the U. S. (it's a Nat Geo collaboration documentary) in the time table of the series but overall a good introduction into the dynamics that played out during the original Cold War and the legacy that it left in the contemporary world and conflicts today that can be considered an inherited extension of it for people not knowing all the details and a beginner to the topic since it leaves you posing some questions and nudging you to do more inquiry, reading and research into the topic.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2021/8/17/will-the-taliban-takeover-lead-to-a-european-refugee-crisis https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.euronews.com/amp/2021/08/16/as-chaos-deepens-in-afghanistan-is-europe-on-the-verge-of-a-fresh-refugee-crisis "Numbers show there hasn't been a massive influx of Afghan migrants in Europe over the past months thus far. In the first half of 2021, around 3,200 irregular border crossings by Afghan nationals were reported at the EU external borders, a European Commission spokesperson told Euronews in a written statement. "This number represents a 41% decrease compared with the previous year," the Commission added, noting that "border and travel restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic had an impact on last year’s figures." While it's "very likely" that a large number of Afghans will need refugee protection in the coming months, "this massive crisis doesn't mean people reach Europe," said Gerald Knaus, the founding chairman of the European Stability Initiative (ESI), a think tank. "To reach Europe, you need to cross a lot of borders which are very much harder to cross today than they were a few years ago," the migration expert went on, pointing to the alleged Greek policies of pushback at its land and sea borders -- which Athens denies. In recent years, the EU has invested significant resources to strengthen its external borders and deter migrants. In 2016, the bloc agreed to pay Turkey €6 billion to prevent Syrian asylum seekers from crossing to Greece. "When it comes to the facts, we don't yet see a large number of Afghans arriving in Turkey and certainly not in Europe. And it's not clear how many will be able to leave Afghanistan -- Pakistan claims that it can protect the border," Knaus noted. "In 2015, in six months more than 500,000 people came spontaneously from Turkey to Greece. In comparison, now in the last six months, the total number of people reaching from Turkey to Greece, not just Afghans but everybody, was about 4,000. So that is 125 times less," he insisted. When it comes to the Belarus route, the numbers are even lower. "It's been around 3,000 so far, so less than the 4,000 to reach Greece," Knaus said. Out of these 3,000, the majority were Iraqis. "So you have a hysteria about big numbers and the reality, is very few people cross borders." "This is fear-mongering and populism. If we confront this and say, 'No, the real crisis is a different one.' It's that at our borders, we're breaking EU laws, and in Afghanistan, a lot of people are in need of protection. These are people that we fought with and for, to rebuild the country for 20 years, and we've abandoned them," Knaus said. Kirişci, who is a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings think-tank, that large numbers of Afghans "kept streaming into Turkey through Iran," citing UNHCR figures. But both experts agreed on one thing: it will be extremely difficult for Afghan migrants to enter the EU. "There is going to be a massive humanitarian crisis on the [Greece-Turkey] border, the kind of crisis that is going to damage the reputation of the European Union internationally as the world is going to see how the European Union resists refugees from entering the Schengen area," Kirişci told Euronews.

One of the in my opinion best content and educationally wise and also one of most visually encaptivating two hour long documentaries I have seen on the conditions and events that facilitated the rise of fascism, Nazism and Hitler, a part of the French produced documentary series the Apocalypse about the events that led up to and during World War II. A very brief two hour sum up and useful educational study with out investing the time in books to deepen the understanding of the topic on what led up to and what enabled the rise of fascism and particularly Nazism as a political movement in the first half of the twentieth-century. If you can see some parallels with some modern and contemporary political movements, ideologies, groups and international public personalities that share some similarties and characteristics with the twentieth century ones all the better in my opinion for deepening your understanding of them by referring back to history to see what they share and don't in the contemporary world with their predecessors and how similar tactics they might use or might act or might not act given the current world conditions and historical circumstances. There is also one in the series detailing the rise of Stalin.

The Taliban actually put an end to some ethnic Afghan warlord tribal practices like child pedophilia and slavery in some rural areas of Afghanistan when they actually held onto power between 1996 and 2001. They are certainly above the tribal stages as a political religious movement and seek more to be a Pashtun unifying force for all of Afghanistan to subject it under one religious order. They are more of a transitiory stage between Red and Blue in my opinion since their strict and fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni Islam is very similar to the one that was present in Saudi Arabia and aims to subjugate the country and evolve it under that sort of order.

Former Taliban founder and leader till his death in 2013 Mullah Omar (1960 - 2013) to US President George Bush: “God has promised us Victory and Bush has promised us Defeat. We will see which promise is more truthful”

This seems brilliant! A whole new perspective to view models of governance and stages of political development. Thanks for the share! I will make sure to watch these parts with the explanation of the relationship between the spiral dynamics stage developmental charts and forms of governance or Beck's concept of stratified democracy.

I noticed here people listen to mostly via YouTube to domestic famous right leaning academics (historians, economists, theologians and other humanities experts of sort), famous public figures with right-wing views and religious authorities that no matter what content they create they dabble unavoidably into politics and ideology of how society here should be organized and what the culture should be like. Its always some sort of nationalism first and most of the people listen to these figures on the biggest and tons of different domestic podcasts here on YouTube (where they like Joe Rogan invite all sorts of guests but I would say mostly these aforementioned voices stick out) and on their YouTube channels as authorities to inform their audience on their views on and of their values of mostly of politics here, history and of the society they live in and of their life. Its a very insular and hermetic YouTube political media consumption culture here, focusing mostly on domestic and regional issues but with nonetheless careful observations, commentaries and opinions on the changes in geopolitical situation in the world in relation to what it means to this country and also how do changes on the international political stage affect politics and politicians here (for example people here carefully watched the the last American elections and had favoritisms with the candidates in terms of their historical public records, comments and opinions on this country and their involvement with it in the past - and view them and feel about them almost exclusively through that lense of the opinions and actions towards their country, while their effect on other people and nations beside them mostly don't matter to them - ethnocentrism) has the potential, in my opinion, to radicalize people around certain pressing issues, amongst the plethora already existing, in the country and regionally. It plays well also into a certain extent the mainstream media narrative here that is tightly controlled and regulated around also some certain perceived existential national issues and the state of politics here in generally. So it's already a complex web of sorts mutually reinforcing some of its shared elements to another (people who watch politically controlled cable TV channels and to inform their preexisting right-wing leanings and biases and people who watch independent content creators and media entertainment entrepreneurs on their YouTube channels and podcasts to inform their preexisting right-wing views and biases, not all of them but most of them here I would reckon) when I see or am informed about the media consumption culture here among different people that's basically telling the same one old narrative and story in different styles and in different forms.

I've grown up on this cartoon on cartoon network so I remember it fondly as a part of my childhood memories and nostalgia so was therefore awe strucked by the genre innovativeness, artistic creativity and broad inspiration sources that went into making this cartoon and its artistic, philosophical and mature theme messaging to not only it's commercially intended audience but also the adults. Courage the Cowardly Dog a Strange Surrealist Masterpiece in creativity, genre innovation and art that goes into this cartoon: Courage the Cowardly Dog was Cartoon Network at its absolute best. The animation and cartoon industry has changed by the best Courage the Cowardly Dog episodes still hold up. The network has mentioned reviving the show which may still come. The show has been off the air for longer than you may think but its legacy is still growing. There's a reason that talk of the network is still full of Courage the Cowardly Dog, and this is a look at why.

Saddam was not a communist he was actually tasked and suported by the CIA to overthrow a pro-Soviet communist government under a general in a coup in the 1960s. The Baathist Parties which Saddam was part of were Pan Arab nationalist and socialist in their ideology at first (Arab self-determination, independence and economic autarchy as much as possible) and then he turned into a Islamist nationalist after the Gulf War.

What in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s idk but those countries had a pretty all around nationalised heavy industry and produced not only for export but for their own domestic market and industries to an extent as well, enriching the countries more directly. I don't know if partioned Germany and Japan for example (which I looked it up had a lower GDP than the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1970s) were considered first world countries in that period or any of the East Asian Tigers for that matter. They were in fact almost on the same level as non industrialised not yet East Asian Tiger countries of that time in terms of economic development. I think that distinction at all was popularised after the Cold War to refer to countries apart from late former colonies that got their independence only in the 1960s and I am not sure Iraq and Syria and even Afghanistan could be classified as fully Third World in that period given the strength of their domestic industries at that time and the fact that their own and foreign companies cooperated under contracts to do large infrastructure projects in those country (for example the Yugoslav construction company Energoprojekt had contracts with domestic Iraqi firms to do large infrastructure projects in Iraq from 1960s up until the 1990s even). Yes, well educated people wanting to further specialise themselves at the most famous western Universities did move and stayed in those countries for a while but then returned to their home counties to use their acquired knowledge and expertise to further improve and run their home countries. There were also migrant workers from those countries coming to the Western ones for permanent residence but that wasn't to a to large extent in comparison to the post Cold War era when those countries suffered more severee brain drains into Western countries of their experts and younger educated populations and also more economic migrations and refugee waves from war due to losing their former industries and economies by being out competed and marginilised and targeted for their natural resources in the new global economic order. Saddam did economic nationalism in the Iraqi oil industry at some period which actually raked a lot of wealth generation for the Iraqi state and citizenry overall given the fact of the vast oil potential and reserves of Iraq. So he did a Gulf State kind of model of economic growth and development but with an unfortunate crucial mistake from him of not having American and other European Big Oil companies in on that deal apart from discriminating and genociding other religious and ethnic groups within Iraq itself that didn't hold power in his regime. I don't know about Syria but I think a lot of their foreign investment projects came from Eastern bloc industrial countries, especially the USSR, now Russia which inherited the special partnership and alliance the USSR had with Syria. They mostly imported and bought some products from Eastern bloc industrial countries but they also had an raw resource export industry of their own and some industry of their own in close cooperation with the those aforementioned countries. Also a military industry in that period also in cooperation with those countries. I know for example Kuwait imported Yugoslav M series tanks for example by the hundreds. What about the deindustrialisation that happened within in the US and the fact that industrial production is done now in China for parts and even finished products for US and European consumer markets on behalf of US and other multinational companies? Does that no longer make them a Sure the global economy has radically changed 1st world countries roles in it since the time of industrialisation but what does that now make them when they ship their former industries overseas. "Pretty modern"? Yes I agree it's important to find the definitions of those concepts from some authoritative sources and to read some book on them to actually grasp how they connect to real world economic realities.

But as the economy gets caught in the evertightening downward debt spiral, with cutbacks and growing unemployment, it becomes easier to induce internecine conflicts, as the different nationalities begin to compete more furiously than ever for a share of the shrinking pie. And once the bloodletting starts, the cycle of vengeance and retribution takes on a momentum of its own. In order to hasten the discombobulation of Yugoslavia, the Western powers provided the most retrograde, violent, separatist elements with every advantage in money, organization, propaganda, arms, hired thugs, and the full might of the US national security state at their backs. Once more the Balkans were to be balkanized.

"I will argue that Western intervention in Yugoslavia has not been benign but ruthlessly selfish, not confused but well directed, given the interests that the interventionist serve. The motive behind the intervention was not NATO's newfound humanitarianism but a desire to put Yugoslavia—along with every other country—under the suzerainty of free-market globalization. I am not the only one who sees the conflict this way; the decision-makers themselves do too. As I will show, they have been far more concerned about privatization and neoliberal "reforms" (rollbacks) than about the well-being of the various Yugoslav peoples." p. 2-3 "So corporate-dominated media rather faithfully reflect the line put out by corporate-dominated political leaders, those decision makers who build their careers in service to the economic powers that be. In regard to Yugoslavia, the Western press dropped all pretense at critical independence and—with some notable exceptions—went into overdrive to demonize the Serbs and create the sensationalist justification for NATO's destabilizing and violent interventions." p. 4 "There are some people who grow indignant at the suggestion that their political leaders lie to them, especially in regard to foreign policy. To suggest as much is to indulge in "conspiracy theories," they maintain. In fact, US presidents never lie so much as when they talk about US foreign policy. In the public stances he took in regard to Yugoslavia, Bill Clinton proved himself a professional liar. When dealing with what he and his associates have said, we can, without turning to alternative sources, point to the lack of evidence to support their claims, and to the contrary evidence suggested by their actions. And we can note their persistent manipulation of images and labels by which they have tried to short-circuit our critical thinking and make evidence itself irrelevant. As is frequently the case, liars can be the best witnesses against themselves." Introduction, p. 6-7 "Much of the debate about the Yugoslav conflict revolves around questions like: Whom do we believe? What sources do we rely on? Is it the free and independent Western media or Belgrade's government-controlled press? I would answer as follows: The US media, as with most of the news media in other Western nations, are not free and independent. They are owned and controlled by largely conservative corporate cartels that adhere to the self-serving neoliberal ideology of international finance capital. The goal of these politico-economic elites is to transform the world into a global economy under the tutelage of the transnational corporations, backed by the unanswerable imperial might of the United States and its allies. A key component of that global strategy, of course, entails capitalist restoration within the former Communist countries. The corporate-owned media seldom stray too far from that dominant ideological paradigm." Introduction p. 5

Some people argue that nationalism, not class, has been the real motor force behind the Yugoslav conflict. This presumes that class and ethnicity are mutually exclusive. In fact, ethnic enmity can be enlisted to serve class interests, as the CIA tried to do with indigenous peoples in Indochina and Nicaragua—and more recently in Bosnia and Kosovo. One of the great deceptions of Western policy, remarks Joan Phillips, is that "those who are mainly responsible for the bloodshed in Yugoslavia—not the Serbs, Croats or Muslims, but the Western powers—are depicted as saviors." While pretending to work for harmony, US leaders have supported "self-determination" in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Vojvodina. "Self-determination" has meant the end of ethnic multiculturalism, the forced monopolization of territory by one or another national group, and the subverting of Yugoslav sovereignty. Legitimate measures of self-preservation taken by the FRY were now stigmatized as criminal actions. The Yugoslav army was no longer a legal instrument of national defense but an aggressor, a threat to the independence of "new nations." When different national groups are living together with some measure of social and material security, they tend to get along.There is intermingling and even intermarriage. Misha Glenny,who ascribes the Yugoslav crisis almost entirely to ethnic enmities, nonetheless admits that before May 1991, Croats and Serbs lived together in relative contentment, experiencing everyday friendships throughout regions that were subsequently "so dreadfully ravaged." While aware that Yugoslavia was entering troubled seas, nobody in their wildest fantasies predicted that towns would be leveled, and Croats and Serbs killing each other. In Bosnia, too, there were "a large number of Muslims, particularly intellectuals in Sarajevo, who refused to give up the Yugoslav idea. They believed genuinely and reasonably that the chaotic mix of Slavs and non-Slavs on the territory of what was Yugoslavia forced everybody to live together."`

I've spent a large part of my childhood being entranced and incapsulated by all of the games of the AOE series from 1, 2 to Mythology and 3 and its expansions. They were basicly my fondest childhood memories and I've improgramed in my mind the sounds and voices from those games as well as the general feeling when playing them and their aesthetic. However this heavy nostalgia of my childhood years and times that I felt when they released the new expansions for all of the games of the genre and the definitive edition remakes of the original games only fueled my escapist desires (especially when listening to the soundtracks, finding new memes about the game and watching gameplay videos of the series and sinking a lot of hours in these activities) and addictive habits of playing video games for long hours during my school years and a large part of my university time to distract myself from some of the problems I've faced and work I've had to do and the unresolved and unmitigated pains and sufferings I've been facing in my own life for some time currently. So eventually after they announced the release of the definitive edition and the 4th title game in the series I've decided to let go of my desires of childhood nostalgia of wanting to play one of those games or watch how the gameplay looks like since I see it as an unhealthy temptation and desire that fuels my wants to using and overabusing it in an unhealthy amount of time to distract myself for investing and directing most of my time and energy in facing and solving my current problems and using it as an escapist unhealthy habit tplo avoid facing issues I now and currently have with my life. Didn't want to intentionally darken up this conversation and thread just wanted to share my experiences and memories with the game series and my obstacles preventing me for being more involved when it comes to upcoming sequel of the game a part from hardware and money ones in terms of starting it up.

Why you should give yourself hapiness and love without relying on others.docx

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