420blazeit69
@420blazeit69@hexbear.net
- Comment on Britain’s richest family sentenced to 4 years in jail 4 months ago:
I think you have a little of that, and a little of this showing that the giga-rich didn’t get that way because they are these perfect human multi-specialty geniuses like they all claim.
Sure, maybe they’re pretty bright in one or two areas. Many successful people are. But they also do real stupid, shortsighted shit like this all the time. They got as rich as they did not on merit, but on family wealth, luck, and exploiting the labor of others.
- Comment on Donald Trump wants to control the Justice Department and FBI. His allies have a plan 5 months ago:
Make it way worse quicker, so more people become friendly to the revolution.
Why would people join a movement that is making things worse right now? Why would you want to race towards increased state repression when your movement is small? Accelerationism isn’t a good idea in this situation, and it’s hard to think of a successful leftist movement that employed it ever.
The reason democrats don’t like shooting fascists is because they are have bought their own lies about the current system working
Agreed. I’d say this makes Democrats useless at best (at least with respect to the “uh so what about all this fascism we have going?” question) and enablers at worst.
- Comment on Donald Trump wants to control the Justice Department and FBI. His allies have a plan 5 months ago:
You’re not really engaging seriously here, but “if voting doesn’t work, what is to be done?” is actually the first (and too often last) political thought most people have outside of our mostly useless sham democracy. And you’re right that fascists deserve to be shot (though you aren’t yet asking why Democrats’ don’t seem to believe that), so it’s understandable your thoughts would go straight to shooting them.
What you’re missing is that this whole conversation has happened countless times before, to the point where there’s an established name for “well why don’t you just go shoot the bad guy?”: adventurism. A bunch of anarchists tried it against high-level state actors 100+ years ago and it accomplished nothing of note, and the consensus among communists is that it’s a bad strategy. It lacks “stable or serious principles, programme, tactics, organisation, and… roots among the masses,” so it doesn’t develop into any systemic change (and makes your organization vulnerable to bad actors). Turns out you can’t take a shortcut around building a mass movement.
Building that movement is the logical conclusion you’re looking for, not random outbursts of violence.
- Comment on Israel to shut down Al Jazeera offices after rising tensions 6 months ago:
Only democracy in the Middle East, baby!
- Comment on House Passes Bill That Defines Criticism of Israel as “Antisemitism” 6 months ago:
The U.S. is the one footing the bill
- Comment on The horrors we've unleashed 6 months ago:
I thicc therefore I am
- Comment on arthropods 6 months ago:
I’m from Buenos Aires and I say KILL 'EM ALL
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Go back to reddit
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Are you an anarchist? I’m not.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Are you an anarchist? I’m not. Like every AES state, I think it’s possible to have justifiable government actions. Governments have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, so yeah, a cop making a legal arrest is not the same as me hitting a stranger over the head and stuffing them in a van.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Why are you bootlicking?
Jesus Christ. Having a consistent definition of “kidnapping” is not bootlicking.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
How is this logic different from the article’s? You’re both calling a legal arrest you don’t like “kidnapping.”
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
You quoted the official statement of the Chinese government, which was quoted in the report.
Ah, I see. What page of the report gives the authors’ version of what actually happened in those cases, or gives an example of something that could be described as kidnapping?
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Non-legal definitions of those terms also imply illegality. There is no legal way to kidnap someone.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Pg. 18 of the full report, linked in the post:
Ye is the former mayor of Chuanliao Town Government in Qingtian County, Zhejiang. Accused of bribery, he fled to Milan, Italy, in July 2001.
In December 2014, the Zhejiang Public Security Department and the Protectorate sent a joint working group to Italy and Spain to carry out persuade to return operations of fugitives from the Lishui and Wenzhou areas.
After being persuaded face-to-face by the working group, Ye flew back to China with the working group to surrender himself on December 23, 2014.
Not only is there no evidence of what you’re suggesting, but this anti-China group’s own report paints a pretty mundane picture.
Their strategy is to create an unfalsifiable position:
- Print a bunch of “China Bad” bullshit, like this report.
- People skim the headlines and think "China Bad."
- Other people read the report and point out how the facts presented don’t show anything objectionable.
- The first group thinks “but we all know China Bad, so I’ll just read that into the facts, no matter how tame they are.”
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
And? A footnote does not change the fact that the report is bullshit.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Where are you getting this nonsense from?
The law. Yes, abduction and kidnapping are only possible when they are done illegally. Illegality is a crucial part of what those terms mean.
You’re essentially making the libertarian “tax is theft” argument: it would be criminal if I did it to you, so it must be criminal when the government does it to you.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
…what?
I’m referencing the actual report you just linked to. I quoted a section of the report that provides an example of the conduct it criticizes. It’s nothing; the report is bullshit.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
I mean, that wasn’t an abuction or kidnapping. There are countless actions that are legal when the government does them but criminal if done by a private citizen.
This isn’t a technical point, either. Mischaracterizing lawful government conduct as criminal is exactly what this report is attempting to do, and we shouldn’t do it ourselves.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Pg. 18:
Ye is the former mayor of Chuanliao Town Government in Qingtian County, Zhejiang. Accused of bribery, he fled to Milan, Italy, in July 2001.
In December 2014, the Zhejiang Public Security Department and the Protectorate sent a joint working group to Italy and Spain to carry out persuade to return operations of fugitives from the Lishui and Wenzhou areas.
After being persuaded face-to-face by the working group, Ye flew back to China with the working group to surrender himself on December 23, 2014.
Nothing alleged here is remotely objectionable.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
What you’re describing is not kidnapping. The article implies China is threatening family members, but it provides no examples, and I have no reason to trust people who deliberately mischaracterize the facts.
If China, for example, was arresting family members of people for no other reason besides being related to a citizen China wants to return home, the authors would probably have just said that.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Ah, makes sense. I’d look more at the U.S. drone assassination program and its (actual) kidnapping and torture operations. That’s the best comparison to what this report alleges.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
China’s abhorrent behavior
What is abhorrent here? The article you linked to has the report’s author saying that telling a citizen to return = kidnapping. It’s trumped-up bullshit.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
Whataboutism is a completely nonsensical concept when comparing countries. The foundation of international law is comparing how different countries handle similar situations.
- Comment on China abducted its own citizens on EU territory, report finds 7 months ago:
This is not a good comparison and isn’t necessary to show this report is bullshit. It isn’t even internally coherent:
“Indeed, the official methodology involves kidnapping,” Harth said. “Citizens are persuaded to return…”
They’re talking about China telling its citizens to return, which is nothing like kidnapping, but they’re calling it that anyway to gin up outrage. Between that and the telltale “Chinese Communist Party” mislabeling, they’re obviously not interested in doing any sort of objective analysis.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
Foreigner rushing off to fight for Ukraine
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
Headline says “ditch,” article says “body of water.” And where is this information coming from? Who found him?
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
BTW thank you for the civil conversation.
spoiler
The “it is fair to say that the USSR stance was no different than the stance of the United States during the same time” stance would get a lot of agreement on Hexbear. We’ll go to bat for the many good things the USSR did, but we’re more than happy to criticize it (or China, or Cuba, etc.) where appropriate. One of the most-cited books on Hexbear – Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti (big recommend, by the way) – has at least a whole chapter (maybe even a whole section, can’t remember) on criticisms of the USSR.
Super jealous you’ve been to Cuba – hope I can go one day!
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
I would not enjoy it if a large group of alt-righters suddenly federated with us and became a very vocal presence, even if a large number of their users were often polite, because I am so strongly opposed to those politics.
There is a difference between occasionally annoying people who generally want good things and occasionally annoying people who generally want bad things. One example:
- Alt-right opinions on immigrants in the U.S. range from “let’s immediately deport millions of people and create an even more deadly southern border” to "we should exterminate those [slurs]."
- Hexbear opinions on the same subject range from “we should have an open border, a guaranteed minimum for all U.S. residents, and we should end the imperial meddling that causes so much immigration in the first place” to “yes and the imperial core owes untold sums in reparations to the Global South.”
Maybe you disagree with both, maybe you get annoyed by people talking about both, but one is fundamentally genocidal and the other is fundamentally humanistic.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
Your stance on the Russia-Ukraine war is more or less the consensus on Hexbear.
